
MALEFiiCIOfiS. 




OF GREATWESITH 




Class _aJj^i3A 
Rnnk .3 4^ 



CopyiigiitN". 



COPyRIGHT DEPOSITS 



Malefactors 

of 

Great Wealth ! 



MALEFACTORS 

of 

GREAT WEALTH ! 



By 

Roswell A. Benedict, A. M. 

Of the New York Bar 



AMERICAN BUSINESS BUREAU 

Room 58, 29 Broadway 
New^ York 



FBRARY of CONGRESS 
TwoCoolM R«cei»ttC 

j DEC 20 . 907 

\ Oopyrifoi entry 
CLASS/i XXc. Ni/ 
i * feOPY B. 



Copyright 1907 by 
RoswELL A. Benedict. 



A CASE ON APPEAL 

FROM 

JUDGE LYNCH 



TO 



THE COURT OF FAIR PLAY 



ARGUMENT 



R. A. BENEDICT 

OF COUNSEL FOR DEFENDANT 



May it please your Honors, the Judges of the 
Court of Business Common Sense in the District 
of the United States of America: 

In arising to reply to the lurid rhetoric of the 
learned counsel, we cannot but express our deep 
pain at the course taken by the avalanche of molten 
words poured forth by our learned brothers upon 
the other side. Where two great forces are op- 
posed to each other, such as are involved in this 
titanic legal struggle, great heat follows their head- 
on collision; and yet, your Honors, we cannot im- 
agine any ground creditable to counsel upon which 
to explain the explosion of so much dynamite at 
our devoted client. In your presence we have 
heard our client assaulted with such terrific epi- 
thets as '^Malefactor of Great Wealth" and ''The 
Wickedest Trust in the World ;'^ but, your Hon- 
ors, denunciations are not facts, and rhetoric is 
not necessarily argument. 



''but who pretender is and wpio is king^ god bless 

us ALL ! IS QUITE ANOTHER THING." 

Your Honors, while walking on the west side of 
Lower Broadway a few days ago, we were met face 
to face by a wild-looking man, dressed in the cos- 
tume of a Eough Eider, his hair floating in the 
wind, his eyes red with a fierce light, his sombrero 
waving aloft in his left hand, and his right hand 



pointing across to No. 26 Broadway. As his eye 
met ours and he saw he had our attention, he hissed 
and sissed, and squealed and yelled, as he shook 
the out-stretched hand in a paroxysm of alcoholic 
fury, "Down with the trusts! Down with 26 
Broadway! Down with the malefactors of great 
wealth! Down with the wickedest trust in the 
world! 'Rah for Teddy! 'Rah three times and a 
tiger for Teddy! 'Rah for the champeen trust-bus- 
ter, Mr. Roosedore Theovelt Trustbuster! 'Rah 
for — " but a policeman seized him and and took 
him to the alcoholic ward. Your Honors, this is 
a type of the frenzy which is just now passing over 
this otherwise sensible country. It is a sort of de- 
lirium tremens of the judgment, a wavering of the 
eye that should be able to see things in a calm 
light, unmiraged by hate, envy, jealousy, and covet- 
ousness. For the time, the line between "mine and 
thine" has quite disappeared. We get title to prop- 
erty now in a different way from what we once 
did. We used to think a man who paid the market 
price for things owned them. We did not know^ 
that it made any difference how large a heap of 
things he got in this way. If he paid for them, 
they were his. But that is all changed now. Now, 
if you want what another man has bought and paid 
for, and spent his time and money upon and im- 
proved and made more valuable than when he got 
it, all you have to do is to call him a "monopoliser" 
a "malefactor of great wealth," a "cormorant 
trust," or even simply a "trust" or a "very rich 
wrong-doer." That settles the matter. No judge, 
jury, or anything of that sort is at all necessary. 
The old title goes up in the air and the new title 
settles on you, and the goods are yours. And if 
anything more is wanted to make you quite sure 



of yourself, just haul the old owner into Ooui-t and 
tell him if he don't bring in his books and show up 
his profits, you will cut him off from business by 
the inter-state commerce clause route. Then when 
his books are in your hands, just thumb them over a 
while until you have found his profit and loss ac- 
count. And if you find that he has sometimes 
netted a loss, don't say anything about it. But 
wherever you find a profit, print it in red letters 
in all the yellow newspapers and let the public yell, 
"What a robber!" That will surely fix the title in 
you so it wont budge a hair. If you and the pub- 
lic say the man's profits are too large, that sweeps 
away his last right, not only to his property, but 
to his good name and his access to the courts. 
Profits, your Honor, are outlaw^ed, since the great 
Standard Oil hold-up in Indiana. Nobody makes 
profits any more but thieves. 

But soberly, your Honors, since when and by 
what word of our Constitution, our laws, or our 
common usage, has the public had the right to in- 
spect private books and thereupon to fix the profits 
of business men, corporations, or "trusts," if you 
please, in this country? Since when have we be- 
come a socialistic colony and, on the ground that 
his profits w^ere too large, have divested of his title 
to property whomsoever we have pleased? To what 
state of anarchy are we drifting? Who of us will 
be safe in his property, if we once admit the prin- 
ciple that the public can fix our profits, whenever 
in its judgment our profits are too large? In the 
name of the God of Justice, your Honors, if this is 
to be the vogue, if any one at all is to be compelled 
to show up his profits in order that the public may 
judge as to their proper size and mulct him ac- 
cordingly, let us resolve ourselves into a socialist 



country at once and fix the exact size of profits in 
a rule which shall bind all alike, and appoint a 
responsible bench of judges to determine the facts 
and apply the rule, taking away from him whose 
profits are larger and adding to him whose profits 
are smaller than lawful, until the profits of every- 
body are the same as everybody else's. But it is 
surely to court anarchy and property-chaos to drift 
on in this way, your Honors; to have a Bureau of 
Corporations, on one side, with an interstate-com- 
merce-clause club in one hand and a rope in the 
other, strangling from private citizens of one of 
our States accounts of their earnings and profits, 
to be published to the country, for the express pur- 
pose of inflaming the envious, the covetous, the 
lazy, and thriftless into contempt for sacred prop- 
erty rights; and on the other side an untried ex- 
politician judge, for trumped-up breaches of the 
Sherman law fixing penalties, not according to 
transgression, but according to profits and ability 
to pay the fine. This frenzy has become so deep 
and so furious, the devil of the itching palm has be- 
come so rampant, your Honors, that such passages 
as this are common in our daily papers : 

"Multitudes will compare the enormous profits upon 
moderate capital with the price of oil, and no allegation 
of reasonableness of price will prevent pressure for still 
further cheapening. If the disclosure, assuming it to be 
authentic, should drive Standard Oil into increasing its 
capital stock four or five times, the measure of self- 
defense will have been taken too late." 

And this : 

"Blue Monday will acquire a special terror for the 
Standard Oil Company if every wash-day is to bring a 
fresh report against it by the Commissioner of Corpora- 
tions. This morning's is chiefly taken up with the dis- 
covery that the Standard sells cheaper abroad than at 
home. Commissioner Smith's eagerness in announcing 
this is very like the anxiety of the small boy to run and 



tell his mother the great news, when he heard that a 
baby sister had arrived. The American people had sus- 
pected as much. When Mr. Rockefeller told them how 
foolish it would he to interfere with his efforts to "con- 
quer the market of the world, ' ' they had a pretty shrewd 
notion that he wished to bleed them in order to do it. 
But what a powerful tariff -re vision argument Commis- 
sioner Smith unwittingly supplies! AU that he alleges 
of the nefarious Standard practice in exacting the utter- 
most farthing from the helpless American consumer, in 
order to give the foreigner cheap goods, is as true of 
many protected manufacturers. It has been proved — nay, 
admitted — of the Steel Corporation. Now, the extortions 
of the Standard could probably be little checked by re- 
vising the tariff; but those protected industries which 
hide behind high duties, while they skin their countrymen 
but sell cheap abroad, could be got at by a Congress or 
an Administration that dared lay a hand upon the tariff. 
Yet the President is standing as pat as mum; and Lodge 
declares, tearfully but firmly, that the tariff cannot be 
revised. ' ' 

Could anything be more monstrous, 3'our Hon- 
ors, more in contempt of constitutional rights than 
these suggestions that it is the public's business 
Avhat are the profits of the Standard Oil Compan^^ 
or when, where, or at what price it sells its prop- 
erty! Oh, your Honors, where is the rule and the 
square! Where the '^equal protection of the laws!" 
For, outside of the pressure from supply outstrip- 
ping demand, the only ^'pressure for still further 
cheapening" which can be applied to this com- 
l^any's products, is the pressure of mob law, which 
it would be the duty of our government, under the 
constitution, to relieve with fixed bayonets, in the 
process of giving this company the "equal protec- 
tion of the laws." That fact should stamp as in- 
citements to mob madness all such newspaper 
effusions as those we have just read. 

What does all this mean, your Honors? What 
devil is possessing our land ! What brainstorm of 
folly? Why, even our President is daft with the 
same afflatus! He also fumes and gesticulates 
against "rich wrong-doers," "malefactors of great 



6 

Avealth'^ and ^'veiy rich men/' and exactly to whom 
he points when applying these epithets is only too 
well known. Does this President of ours know 
what he is doing? Does he know to what chaos in 
jurisprudence his teachings tend? Does he know 
that he is maddening the masses to Lynch proceed- 
ings? Does he realize that he himself, in the eyes 
of the mob, has accused, tried, condemned, and 
branded these men who are now but awaiting ex- 
ecution — at the hands of the mob? 

Let such teachings continue, your Honors, and, 
when our mobs sack and burn the homes and the 
business plants of our "malefactors of great 
wealth," who shall say that they are not Roose- 
velt understudies in logical action? The wrongs 
he sees are such as no law we have ever saw. 
Why, then should the victims of such wrongs show 
greater temperance and forbearance than their 
great teacher. Why should they await the amend- 
ment to the constitution and the making of laAvs 
thereunder to fit the crime of having "great 
wealth,'^ before exemplifying in fiery deeds their 
abhorrence of that wickedness which Mr. Roosevelt 
objurgates with such fiery words? Mr. Roosevelt 
does not wait. Why should his disciples who hear 
his fervid gospel? 

Ah your Honors, Mr. Roosevelt doesn't seem to 
know that we have laws to cover crimes and that 
our property and other rights are as fixed as if 
cast in brass. If those he denounces have not of- 
fended by these century-old standards they have of- 
fended by none; and his denunciation is itself a 
violation of law. But, on the other hand, if they 
have thus offended, the courts are there to pass 
upon the facts and fix the penalty; so that in any 
event the President himself is a "wrong-doer." In 



our statute laws and in our constitution we have 
our written law, governed by the principle that 
they must be construed liberally in favor of the 
accused and strictly against the curtailment of im- 
memorable rights, such as our rights of property; 
and in our common law we have long lines of de- 
cisions, no less fixed and definite in that regard 
than our lex scripta. There is no latitude left for 
the "construction" which Mr. Roosevelt would have 
inject full of India rubber every fibre of our legal 
rights when they offend "my policies." The old 
maxim, stare decisis, applied century after century, 
has made hard and fast those very rights which 
^Ir. Roosevelt by his "post-road" clauses and his 
"interstate commerce" latitudinizings would re- 
mold to his own notion. And still our President 
furies and fulminates against great fortunes; still 
he utters the hope that the courts may yet take his 
vi(Mv of constitutional construction, extra-legal and 
extra-constitutional though it is. What then your 
Honors? Suppose, without changing our consti- 
tutiou we Rooseveltutionized our rules of construc- 
tion? Who is Mr. Roosevelt; whence has he such 
an infallible scent for the right that no after-comer 
mie:ht aspire to his oracular rank? If Mr. Roose- 
velt may construe our written laws according to 
his judgment, defy the maxim, stare decisis, change 
the meaning of the English language to suit his 
ideas, and remake our whole conception of prop- 
erty rights, what later prophet may not do the 
same? If Mr. Roosevelt may point the finder of 
condemnation at a man who is worth $100,000,000, 
as a "malefactor of creat wealth;" or, if when they 
have exceeded a certain limit he can hold up the 
profits of a corporation to excite the rabble, who 
shall say that any other man whatever mav not 



treat his neighbor as an outlaw because the neigh- 
bor wears finer clothing than he? If Mr. Roose- 
velt may so judge, why not the next one? When 
the legal line is once crossed ; when the Rubicon of 
fixed law is once behind us, how broad and unlim- 
ited for the socialist free-shooter will be the plains 
before us? What is a fair profit? What is a de- 
cent fortune? 

Ah, your Honors, there are those who will judge 
Mr. Roosevelt less leniently than we. There will 
be those who will say that he is only playing a des- 
perate game of popularity, of political chess, of a 
demagogic dosing of the people with pink pills for 
paling adoration when he pursues by all the de- 
vious ways of press-agency and interstate-com- 
merce club a corporation like the Standard Oil 
Company, which has knowingly broken no law. We 
do not say it ; we do not believe it, but others not so 
full of loving kindness as we will say that he ap- 
pointed a callow politician as a United States 
judge to do a dirty political job, because no well- 
seasoned wearer of the ermine would ever have 
dared to drag the profit and loss account of a great 
corporation into court as a basis for a fine so bril- 
liantly great that it would gild even with brighter 
gold the already golden halo of the "champeen 
trust-buster" of the age. We do not say it, but oth- 
ers less charitable will say that Mr. Roosevelt has 
thus pursued the Standard Oil Company, in order 
tliat he may mount his throne and, pointing to the 
wounded monster, exclaim, "Oh ye loyal people, 
our most faithful subjects, behold the mighty dra- 
iion which your mightier St. George, for your weal, 
hath transfixed Avith the sacred spear that know- 
eth no brother!" That is what some wicked peo- 
ple will say, your Honors; some people so wicked 



that they know not when they see it true holiness, 
the perfect fount of square deal undefiled. We say, 
confusion upon such undesirable citizens, your 
Honors! But we fear our anathemas may not 
carry. 

The rule has always been that a man was en- 
titled to as much property as he could get a legal 
title to; and that that property, subject to non- 
discriminating taxation, was his to enjoy without 
molestation, unless obnoxious to police or sanitary 
regulations, or amenable to the law of eminent do- 
main. There have been no limitations to these 
rights; no measure as to size or tenure or method 
of devolution during the life of the owner, other 
than the one given. Now without establishing 
any different hard and fast rule that shall govern 
us all alike, suppose Mr. Koosevelt be allowed to 
attack first this and then that individual and de- 
nounce him as "a malefactor of gTeat wealth,'' 
making the fact of his wealth a distinguishing 
characteristic of the man accused ; suppose we per- 
mitted any one to denounce the profits of this or 
that person — profits being property — ^on the alleg- 
ation that they were "too large" — would we not 
be starting down the chute to anarchy? Would it 
not soon be a go-as-you-please shooting match for 
all propertyless bummers able to buy a gun? 
What will guide us, your Honors, after our old 
rule has been destroyed and before a new rule has 
been made, except the new rule whose light glim- 
mers in the heart-sanctuary of Mr. Roosevelt and 
liis co-anarchists? What are laws for? Why have 
we had such careful definitions of property-rights 
for, lo, these hundreds of years? Is it not that a 
man might know where he was at? That he might 
know whether, if he taxed his brains and tasked 



10 

his flesh to get a little property together, he might 
have it himself instead of being compelled to di- 
vide it with the loafers and the lazy, hoodlums and 
blackmailers, who idled and lay in wait while he 
labored? What is a country without definite laws 
hedging property rights, your Honors? Why, your 
Honors, our laws of this kind are all the compass 
we have to find our property bearings by. If a 
ship scorns its compass, what is its fate, your 
Honors? 

Your Honors, we have often wondered if Mr. 
Roosevelt ever stops to think just what he is about 
in constantly using such hard words as "malefac- 
tors of great wealth,'^ "lawbreakers," and the like 
so freely in connection with "wealth" and "riches." 
What he seems to us to be doing is to make thought- 
less people associate wrongdoing and malefaction 
peculiarly with the rich, thus psychologizing the 
mob to believe that rich folk are either criminal 
because they are rich or rich because they are crim- 
inal ; and that they are, theref\)re, outlaws in any 
event. And, your Honors, what must be the in- 
creasing effect of Mr. Eoosevelt's Sunday-school 
teachings, when to his other hard words he joins 
Ills anathemas against "swollen" fortunes and "the 
menace of great accumulations of wealth?" 

This line of talk seems to give point to his' de- 
nunciations of "malefactors of great wealth;" and 
to leave the impression that the "rich" are a shady 
lot any way who should be specially regulated; 
since it is being rich wherein consists' the "wrong- 
doino" and "malefaction." Is this judicious, your 
Honors? Is lie a good President who attaches a 
sfiffma to property and thus breeds contempt for 
property rights? Is it wise to teach the rabble 
that a man is rich because he is bad and poor be- 



11 

cause be is good? Is it the man with much or the 
man with little to lose, who is the more likely to 
sack and burn with the mob? Does not the man 
with property by that same token give heavier 
bonds for good behavior than the man without. 

It seems to us, your Honors, as if to follow the 
President would be to go backward into the bogs 
and swamps of old, where might made right and 
the booty belonged to the man able to swing tbe 
heaviest club. For laws defining property-rights 
seem to have come to us naturally as the condition 
of gregarious life. Away back somewhere, the big- 
gest bully got the biggest share and for a while he 
had only to shake his Big Stick to make all the 
weaker ones leave their property in his hands and 
go hide. But by and by a lot of these weaker ones 
got together and formed an alliance against Big 
Sticks, and when the Bully came along and grabbed 
somebody's horse or cow or pretty daughter, this 
Alliance pitched on to him and made him unhand. 
Then he argued the case in his way and they ar- 
gued it in theirs. He said might made right and 
they said property belongs to him who gets it first 
from some fellow not in their circle or tribe. And 
that was the rule they made. He who gets a thing 
first is its owner — meaning always, unless he took 
it by force from one of them. But that was the 
beginning of property law. A lot of men leagued 
to2:ether and beat the Bully, Might makes right; 
and then, so neither one of the alliance could have 
an advantage over any other, they made this rule. 
That was to settle the question of title. And to 
settle the question, all that one of the Alliance 
had to do was to prove he 2:ot there first, and not 
that he had swung the Biggest Stick. You see, 
your Honors, it was a general rule or law and it 



12 

covered all the community with the same mantle. 
It did not say, He who gets it first owns it, unless 
he is ^'a malefactor of great wealth/^ That was 
too indefinite and it would have spoiled the sim- 
plicity of the rule to lug in differences made by 
being rich or poor. But the Alliance said, Who- 
ever will live according to this law, is one of us, 
and in order that each may know when a thing is 
his'n, we will all stand together and make it his'n, 
"If he got it first!" But these early law-makers 
had to go a step farther by and by. They traded 
among themselves, and, as usual, there was a lot of 
bad men among them who trumped up titles to th-e 
property which some of their brothers had in the 
Alliance and turned every stone to cheat them- 
selves into property they had not earned. And 
these law-makers had to lay down other laws or 
rules according to which property once "mine" was 
declared now to be "thine." And the rule was 
that if a piece of property was "mine" it became 
"thine" if the first party delivered it to the second 
party of his own free will and said it should thence- 
forth belong to the second party. Or if he had 
not so delivered it, still, if the second party could 
prove that the second party had bought it of the 
first party and had given something of value 
in exchange for it, it would belong to the 
second party. But all these were general rules, 
applying to everybody alike, without dis- 
tinction between rich and poor. There was no 
limit set to the amount of property one could get 
in this way. Nobody was called "a malefactor of 
great wealth" because he had more than another. 
The people did not bother about a man because he 
was rich. Thev were not afraid of him because he 
was rich. Being rich did not make him proof 



IB 

against the Big Stick of the constable if he stole 
or, thinking his riches would save him, hurt a neigh- 
bor. But the great point is, your Honors, these 
rules w-ere general rules and they applied to all 
alike; because in order to have them enforced they 
had to please all and be just as good for on-e as 
another, or the camp would have been broken up 
into parties of those whom the rules favored and 
those whom they did not favor. So, your Honors, 
the excuse for making a law lies in its universal ap- 
plication. These laws have come down to us with- 
out change. As it was in the savage tribe, so now, 
if a man gets a thing first and there is no other 
owner, it is his. If his neighbor OAvns it, still he 
can have it, with the neighbor's consent ; and when 
he gets it in this way, it is his without question; 
and any man who goes up and down the land call- 
ing him a "malefactor of great wealth" because he 
has gotten together a lot of property in this way, 
call it the cottage of the laborer or the palace of 
the rich man, call it stocks and bonds, or tenements 
on the East Side, or call it profits of the Standard 
Oil Company or of the United States Steel Corpor- 
ation, or what not, is an insurrectionary who 
should be restrained. For, your Honors, if we 
listen to him, we shall find ourselves right back in 
the bogs and swamps of the Big Stick and "Might 
makes right.'' Our alliance will have been broken 
up. The rule will have been destroyed and none 
of us will know whether our title is good. We 
got it by the old rule, to be sure. But that don't 
count now. A new rule has been added to which 
Ave have not agreed. But, nevertheless, there are 
a lot of us who will like the new rule even if we 
have not agreed to it; even if it has not been 
written into our Constitution and laws and regu- 



14 

larly adopted as our law. Some of us will like it, 
because we have no property of our own; and be- 
cause it will give us some of the property of other 
people who have had greater luck than we in heap- 
ing up property. But others of us who have heap- 
ed up the property will object to the rule. We will 
holler, "No fair V^ Why did you not make the new 
rule before we worked so hard and got so much 
property together? Why did you not tell us that, 
no matter how hard we worked for it, it was going 
to be unlawful for us to have any more property 
tlian the rest of you? Why did you not begin to 
cry out "Malefactors of Great Wealth !" before we 
Avere wealthy? Why did you not give us a chance 
also to lie by quietly until a lot of fools had worked 
their heads off getting property together; and then 
join the rest of you in shouting "Malefactors of 
(rreat Wealth !'' and in dividing among ourselves 
the property of these malefactors. We say all this 
is "no fair;" you have taken a mean advantage of 
us. Before we had done so much under the old 
rule, you should have told us that that was the rule 
no longer. And then, too, there is the difficulty 
of making the new rule work smoothly; because 
you will have to fix the line of wealth within which 
we cannot be called "Malefactors of Great Wealth," 
and where will it be? At $1000? At f 10,000? 
At f 100,000? At 11,000,000— or where" 

This is a very broad and a very difficult ques- 
tion, your Honors. We are facing legal chaos in 
its answering, unless we hold on to the old rule 
until the new one has been whittled down to a 
very nice fit. IMeantime, your Honors, we think 
it would be a very good plan not to call anybody 
"Malefactors of Great Wealth" until we fix a hard 
and fast liuo bevond wliicli the accumulation of 



15 

wealth will be a malefaction; and not to iterate 
and reiterate the statement that we are going to 
bring the ^^rich" to justice, when the w^ord "rich" 
carries no necessary stigma with it before the law 
and cannot differentiate the good from the bad. 
If we did thus rant against malefactors as being 
rich, when the law merel}^ divides citizens into 
those wdio obey the law and those who do not, we 
should think the reason why we lugged in "rich" 
all the while was because we were a demagogue 
trying to fool the people with a pretense of zeal 
and were putting votes higher than communal mo- 
rality. 

But your Honors, there is a reason. This other- 
wise sensible and just public of ours was not 
wrought up to this' point of lawless frenzy by any 
stranger. There is method in this madness, the 
method of experts in preparing public madness to 
compass private ends. And, your Honors, we are 
grieved to say that, in the w^hole trend of their 
arguments before this Court, counsel for these wily 
plaintiffs, have shown that, in their view, a fee will 
justify any associations, any methods, and any col- 
lateral wrong. 



II 



PERSONAL BITTERNESS SHOULD BE FOREIGN TO THIS 
CONTROVERSY. ALL MEN DO AS THEY MUST. 

For whatever purpose this withering fire of 
hard names w^as furied forth by connsel for the 
wily plaintiffs, we think w^e can see more and bet- 
ter reasons than those of "total depravity" and 



16 

"abhorrent greed" — to quote the exact language of 
plaintiff's counsel — urging American Production, 
the defendant in this action, to appeal this case 
to this the most equitable court of our nation. 
And, furthermore, may it please your Honors, we 
do not propose, in our contention to the contrary 
of the argument of plaintiff's counsel, to return 
evil for evil and fritter away our breath and the 
patience and time of this most high court with 
argumenta ad hominem and loud denunciations of 
wickedness of these wily plaintiffs. For although 
we can easily prove the wily plaintiff the Importing 
Trust, to be a pirate, a pickpocket, an assassin and 
an escaped convict, and the hardly less wily plain- 
tiff the Exporting Trust to be almost as bad, 
nevertheless we shall do this, if we do, in no spirit 
of bitterness, but rather as our duty to our client, 
American Production, and altogether in sorroAV 
and in no wise in anger; and the reason of our 
Christian spirit is this: 

After all that has been said on the subject we do 
not believe, your Honors, that the human heart is 
such a very bad thing in it's intent. If it is "alto- 
gether wicked," it is because bread and butter and 
their equivalents, in one sense or another, lie in 
that direction. We do not believe that a poor 
human creature "wills" either to be good or bad. 
We believe such a creature has an earnest desire 
to live with the least pain and the greatest com- 
fort; which earnest desire is called by some "the 
instinct of self-preservation." In line with this 
instinct of self-preservation, your Honors, there 
have gathered, through the long ages of evolution, 
a group of proclivities', all of which are indispen- 
sable to agreeable existence, and all of which are 
expressed l)y brain-cells, also outlined through the 



17 

ages. In fact these proclivities are the ministers 
unto this physical life which to most of us is so 
precious; and we could not dismiss either of them 
without opening a window to a harsh wind that 
might blow out the little candle of our life. In 
addition to these proclivities, we have all been 
gifted with intelligence, also a proclivity, and also 
represented by, and acting through brain-cells, in- 
voluntarily formed, the true purpose of which is 
to make plain to our other proclivities the clearest 
and surest path to their safe exercise in the line 
of their object. 

And, your Honors, the man who owns these 
proclivities, although they have absolute power 
over his thoughts and actions, had no choice in 
saying how one proclivity should be related to 
another.. With different people, these proclivities 
have different relative values. In some, one pro- 
clivity will predominate; in others, another. If 
a man's proclivities are nicely balanced one against 
another, you have a model citizen. But if they 
are out of balance, you may have what is common- 
ly called a "crank ;" or it may be a criminal. But 
in every case what he will do under given circum- 
stances is determined by the relative influence of 
these groups' of brain-cells which represent the 
proclivities; and all the relative sizes and values 
of these groups are determined by parentage and 
environment, over which the subject has no con- 
trol. The manner in which these proclivities, 
through their respective groups of brain-cells, come 
into action which eventuates or not in muscular 
activity on the part of the subject, — according to 
the nature of the proclivity — is also entirely be- 
yond the control of the subject, such action being 
automatic and irresistible. For, as we have said. 



18 

these proclivities are the direct off-spring of what 
we call "the instinct of self-preservation/' and 
their only business is to save the body of th-e subject 
from pain or furnish it with pleasure. Therefore 
the physical condition of the body is the particu- 
lar concern of the proclivities and that condition is 
evidenced by sensations over which again the sub- 
ject has no control. For instance, if the stomach 
be empty, the subject feels hunger. This sensation 
of hunger causes an association of ideas which sug- 
gests the necessity of food. The hunger procliv- 
ity awakens the reasoning or intuitional proclivity, 
through which arises into consciousness a vision 
called "memory'' of when and where food has been 
theretofore obtained; and muscular play which 
takes the direction of food follows irresistibly as 
to the subject and naturally as to its position in 
the series of actions over which the proper procliv- 
ity has control, that proclivity for the moment rep- 
resenting the entire ego and wearing the ego's 
apparel. And so with any other matter affecting 
the physical life of the subject. A physical con- 
dition which, on behalf of the subject, requires 
action to secure pleasure or avoid pain, immediate- 
ly causes a memory or vision to arise in conscious- 
ness, which is associated with some former action 
to the same end: and through the motive-instiga- 
tion of the particular group of brain-cells affected, 
muscular action follows in the direction of the 
proper relief. All this is done irresistibly, so far 
as the subject alone is concerned. In a word, the 
exciting cause of proclivity-action lies beyond the 
control of the subject in a physical sensation or 
condition which his humanity imposes upon him; 
and the action follows its sufficient cause. A 
particular point that we wish to make is that 



19 

sometimes the association of ideas awakened by a 
given physical condition arouses several proclivi- 
ties at once, which will persist in proportion to 
the power of the cells and of the exciting cause. 
Sometimes the activities of these proclivities har- 
monize and so contribute to one and the same 
result. Then there is no sense of conflict or notion 
of decision or "willing." But sometimes opposed 
proclivities may be aroused simultaneously; as for 
instance, the desire, usually called "acquisitive- 
ness'^ and the desire usually called "benevolence." 
In this' case, the stronger proclivity will prevail 
and the subject will prove himself either an honest 
man or a thief, according to the relative powers 
of the brain-cells representing these proclivities, 
and the degree of excitement which each has 
suffered. In any event, the subject was fore- or- 
dained from the foundation of the race, under 
certain circumstances' acting as excitants to pro- 
clivity-action, to be either an honest man or a 
thief; but being conscious of the existence of two 
different emotions, one leading towards the act 
and the other away from it, the subject will believe 
that he "willed" either to leave his neighbors purse 
alone or to appropriate it, according as one or the 
other group of brain-cells proved the stronger. 
He could not see the complex machinery which 
caused his act. He could not realize that the 
groups of brain-cells which were the next cause 
of his action, whether he stole or stale not, were 
"the heirs of all the ages," and that he could not 
change their action nor prevent them for the time 
being from assuming his clothing, any more than 
he could cast a star from it's celestial location. 
This is natural, your Honors. He felt "free," 
therefore, he believed he was "free" and that his 



20 

act was one of a '^free will.'' But if his will were 
as free as it seems to be; were his choice between 
two courses of action possible, he w^ould be nothing 
less than God himself. Alas! the logic of events 
proves him to be, just as he is, a single little un- 
willing event in the endless string of changes 
which the matter composing his body has been go- 
ing through since it's atoms were created. So far 
as the individual is concerned, he has no more 
"free will" than if he were stone instead of flesh 
and blood, the belief that his will is "free" being 
merely an inference from faulty premises. There- 
fore, your Honors, all our actions being thus the 
result of circumstances over which none of us' has 
any control, and every one of us in body, mind and 
soul, being just exactly of that causal nature which 
must produce the very actions i^roceeding from us, 
whatever be a person's acts, we cannot say "He 
did it to injure me." Whatever he did was because 
of the peculiar balance of his proclivities ; proclivi- 
ties caused by the necessity of keeping his body 
from pain or affording it pleasure. All we can 
honestly say is, "He is so constructed from the 
beginning of time that this act was caused by 
what he could not control." Your Honors, this 
question of the origin of proclivities, namely, as 
the guardians of our physical lives, the sine qua 
non of the perdurance of our kind, is of great 
importance to our argument and we venture to 
summarize onr remarks thereon, as follows: 

Our most remote evolutionary ancestor Avas a 
minute organic cell. 

This cell developed a muscular and a nervous 
system. 

Certain things were necessary to its continued 
life. 



21 

It had sensations, denoting need. 

These sensations had a reflex etfect upon the 
motor nerves. 

The muscles of locomotion by an equally reflex 
action of these motor nerves moved the cell into 
such a relation with its environment as to reduce 
the need and allay the exciting sensation. 

In the course of ages the one cell developed 
around it other cells, which were the sensoria, 
corresponding to other needs which arose from 
variety of environment. 

This collection of cells was what we now call 
the ^'brain," and they developed a clearing hous'e 
for their sensations, which interrupted the in- 
stantaneous play between some of their sensa- 
tions and the motor nerves. 

This clearing house we call ^^memory." It was 
the result of past experience. It contained the 
beginnings of our metaphysical law which we call 
^'Association of Ideas." Here began the develop- 
ment of the reasoning creature. Sensations then 
awoke an association of ideas', a comparison of 
experiences had under similar sensations. Those 
^'memories'' which were connected with agreeable 
results then transmitted the delayed current of 
sensation to the motor nerves which set the 
muscles in operation and disposed the whole 
organism in accordance with the most satisfac- 
tory experiences'. Thus eon after eon passed 
by. The brain grew and became more and more 
minutely correspondent to environment. It was 
not a simple but a very complex machine. 
Groups of cells had evolved to correspond to par- 
ticular phases of life of the subject, all excitable 
through speciflc sensations, which transmitted 
their currents through the clearing house of 
memory and by association of ideas touched just 
the requisite motor nerves to provoke muscular 
action which, if the memory-record was correct, 
would supply the need and allay the sensation. 
This is whence we came and what we are — or- 
ganic machines. 



22 

Your Honors, there is nothing we can think of 
which so well illustrates our notion of human ac- 
tion as our modern graph ophone. The machine has 
externally the same identical appearance no mat- 
ter what record is being delivered from it. But in 
fact it changes its identity with the changing rec- 
ord. The same throat is used, but its utterances 
are from a different source from record to record. 
Under some circumstances it is a well-known prima 
donna; under others, it is a celebrated brass band. 
And so on indefinitely. Yet all the time it looks 
the same to the naked eye. Now a man is a grapho- 
phone. One set of proclivities speaks through his 
mouth, looks from his eye, acts in his movements. 
Then he is one creature. The record is changed 
and he is another creature. Another set of proclivi- 
ties has been attached to the nerves and the muscles 
by another sensation; and while externally ident- 
ical, the internal representative of the ego is differ- 
ent. How often we have heard it said, "Smith was 
not himself to-day," meaning that he was different 
in the way he impressed the witness. Sometimes 
little Tommy is "as cross as a bear" ; and sometimes 
"as good as an angel." They are different Tom- 
mies. Sometimes one group of proclivities is act- 
ing through his graphophone of a body, sometimes 
another. But his body is merely the plaything of 
his proclivities, and his proclivities are as merely 
the plaything of his physical sensations, resulting 
from a full or empty, a sick or well stomach, re- 
freshed or tired muscles, or some other condition of 
body or environment; or resulting even from some 
state of mind — brain-cells — caused by some circum- 
stance which has awakened a peculiar association 
of ideas, but with regard to wliich the setting off of 
one proclivity against another may have neutralized 



2^ 

action. And it may be added that his sensations 
are the mere plaything of his internal and external 
environment which in turn are the mere plaything 
of the course of creation and evolution. 

Under this theory of ours, your Honors, human 
conduct can hest be explained. It is easier to be- 
lieve that every human action is inevitable than to 
believe that it had no cause back of the actor. How 
otherwise can you explain the conduct of the man 
Avho, in spite of resolutions to the contrary, solemn 
promises, and earnest desire, always falls a victim 
to the same temptation and commits the same act 
over and over again, never once forgetting his for- 
mer revolting experience and its bad effect upon his 
happiness? He promised better things' while under 
the influence of one set of proclivities; and broke 
his promises under the influence of another set. 
The fact is there are as many different men in one 
body as are possible from permuting and combining 
human proclivities. 

But let no man s'ay, your Honors that if a man 
cannot help doing what is injurious to others, and 
therefore called "wrong," he ought not to be re- 
strained. If a man kills, he is dangerous to life. 
If he steals, he is dangerous to property. And as 
you would confine a wild animal; destroy a mad 
dog; or raise an umbrella, it is fitting and right 
that rational beings should protect themselves from 
unhappily contrived human beings by such re- 
straint as will remove the danger. 

Therefore, your Honors, we have no bitterness 
toAvard the wily plaintiffs. They are as they were 
created. They do as they must. Their machinery 
is operated by unseen excitants; they naturally 
move in line with the instinct of self-preservation ; 
or nt lenst intend to; and thev are in no wise re- 



24 



sponsible in any abstract way ; but if they are doing 
injury to our client, they must be properly re- 
strained in ways which mature deliberation will 
determine. 



III. 



INFLAMMATORY DENUNCIATION AND EXAGGERATED 
EPITHETS ARE NOT ARGUMENT. 

Your Honors we desire to call to your attention 
various expressions', in addition td those already 
mentioned as uttered by counsel for the wily plain- 
tiffs, the aforesaid Importing Trust and Exporting 
Trust, and to move that they be expunged from the 
record of argument in this action. From what we 
have just said, it appears that there is and has been 
no such thing as malice in any action heretofore 
taken by the defendant, American Production ; that 
whatever it has done is but the result of its inherent 
nature, which it did not contrive and over which it 
hath no control ; and that the exciting causes of all 
its action lie beneath its reach somewhere in the 
very roots of its being. Therefore, when plaintiffs' 
counsel lay any action of this defendant to "cor- 
porate greed"; when they hiss between their set 
teeth the expression "predatory Avealth," or when 
they thunder out "protectionist avarice," they are 
using baseless terms, and, we fear, attempting to 
excite passions, appeal to which is not warranted 
by any action of our client, American Production ; 
unless, in tlie vocabulary of the modern "trust- 
buster," "greed" means the ordinary enterprise 
shown by any person in scMMu-ing the profit allowed 



by the current degree of demand for his goods'; 
^^predatory wealth," capital industriously earning 
dividends, in the same way pursued by capital 
everywhere, since capital came into being; and 
"protectionist avarice" the natural desire to con- 
fine American demand to American supply, giving 
all Americans' a fair field with favor to none. But, 
your Honors, although we can honestly say that 
our client has done naught to merit these furious 
epithets, since what it does is without malice and 
without volition, we are likewise ready to admit 
that there is no malice in the wily plaintiff, the Im- 
porting Trust, and its' partner in sin, the Export 
ing Trust, when they thus by proxy pour the lava 
of their volcanic denunciations upon the head of our 
devoted client, American Production. And yet, 
your Honors, as we said a little way back, there is 
a reason. These plaintiffs do not attack our client 
in this way except it be for the purpose of self- 
preservation, of diminishing pain or increasing 
pleasure for themselves, in accordance with the re- 
sults of our analysis of human actions a few mo- 
ments ago. The withering anathemas of these 
plaintiffs merely stand for an attempt to destroy 
an enemy, not for the joy of the destruction, but in 
order to remove from their path an obstacle in the 
way of their happiness. Now, your Honors, it is 
very easy to see the object of all these hard names 
as applied to our client by the wily plaintiffs. They 
wish to destroy our client, American Production, at 
least for a time, in order that they may enjoy what, 
in a measure, American Production is* now enjoy- 
ing, viz., the American domestic market; the Im- 
porting Trust, as a location for the sale of cargoes 
of foreign goods, whereon it will make a profit ; and 
the Exporting Trust, as a location where it can buy 



26 

"raw materials" free of tariff duties, to work up 
into other goods for the export trade. This, your 
Honors, is the purpose of all this wild tirade 
against American Production, so cunningly called 
"the trusts" by counsel for the defense. It is on 
this account, your Honors, that these plaintiffs 
have s'o bitterly attacked our beneficent client, 
American Production, and not because they delight 
to see honest and industrious American citizens 
cast down unto death with the despair that seizes 
men when they see their employment gone and 
slow starvation menacing them and their dear wives 
and children; not because they delight to see this 
great nation halt upon its upward path to bury its 
untimely dead and build afresh the structure once 
so fair and necessary to its life and to its progress, 
but shaken to the earth by the dynamite conspira- 
cies of these wily plaintiffs ; for, your Honors, these 
plaintiffs are not bloodthirsty and wanton, but 
merely market-thirsty and hungry for trade, and 
the reflex action of their longing sensations takes 
no note of the horrors, far worse than internecine 
war, through which our devoted nation must wade, 
if "tariff revision" finally accords them their de- 
sires. 



27 



IV. 



THE PLAINTIFF, THE IMPORTING TRUST, IS THE CEN- 
TURY OLD MORTAL ENEMY OF AMERICAN PRODUC- 
TION, AND ALL IT SAYS ABOUT ''''THE TRUSTS," 
THEREBY MEANING AMERICAN PRODUCTION, THE 
DEFENDANT IN THIS ACTION, SHOULD BE TAKEN 
CUM GRANO SALIS. 

Let US be just, your Honors, and, before we con- 
demn too severely its effort to preserve its family 
line, acknowledge the lofty pedigree of the wily 
plaintiff, the Importing Trust, and the century-old 
interests it has at stake. 

The Importing Trust, your Honors', is a vast in- 
terest, whose octopus-like body rests within our sea- 
board cities, but whose thread-like tentacles have 
laid hold, with a more or less deadly grasp, upon 
nearly all the veins and arteries of our country. 
The lives and the happiness and the stomachs of its 
members depend, primarily, not upon this defend- 
ant, American Production, but upon Foreign Pro- 
duction, it having been their practice from time 
immemorial to inflame the people of this country 
airainst their real benefactor, our client, American 
Production, by the application of odious epithets 
like "favored classes,'' "tariff favorites," "infant 
industries," in the earlier days, and latterly by call- 
ing our client horrific names, such as "trusts," 
"predatory wealth," "cormorant corporations" and 
the like, until the people, blind with rage and with 
hate against their only hope of life and progress, 
have arisen and torn down the tariff-dike and 



28 

allowed the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, to 
sit as sole mistress in our marts and gather bound- 
less wealth from the savings of our people, while 
millions of our people starved on every hand and 
the whole nation languished in despair. This has 
been the course of the members of the Importing 
Trust for more than a century; the same course 
they are pursuing now, with high hope of the same 
result as that so often attained of old. 

We say it in all kindness and with full remem- 
brance of our philosophy which excludes the no- 
tion of malice, but we say only the truth when we 
declare that the Importing Trust for more than a 
century has been for us in this land a giant bird 
of prey, with no other interest here than to plunder 
us of our vitals when w^e wax fat; and when we 
have thus been levelled to the earth in poverty, to 
wing its way to a distant hill-top, above the carrion 
stench from our dead workers, and await the rising 
of a fresh race of workers and the time when 
American wealth has accumulated enough once 
more to make it worth the while of this same foul 
bird to descend anew upon our homes and hearts. 

It was the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, 
your Honors, who first applied the name of "trusts'' 
to all American Production, as a term of sweeping 
reproach that would madden our people to hate 
their own and cleave to this predatory alien, the 
Importing Trust. Surely, your Honors, there is 
only poetical justice in turning the tables upon this 
monster of destruction, this prodigy of hypocrisy, by 
also calling it a "trust." Surely, it is no more 
than just to apply this term to a mighty aggregate 
of interests, moss-groAvn with dark and damp life, 
which for more than a hundred years has fought at 
every step with bloodthirsty fury the progress of 



29 

American Production on this soil. American Pro- 
duction, did we say? Ay, the progress of American 
Ciyilization, we might have said; since American 
Production for American Consumption measures to 
an ounce American Civilization. From our Colonial 
days down to this hour we have thus been victim- 
ized and betrayed by the wily plaintiff. As colon- 
ists we were merely a flock of sheep for fleecing by 
the wily plaintiff, which used every endeavor with 
the English King and Parliament to strangle every 
sign of life shown by our client, American Produc- 
tion, on its manufacturing side. It pretended to a 
divine right to enter our colonies with its goods and 
compel the tribute of high prices from our fore- 
fathers, who were forbidden to manufacture. 
Therefore we think that it is due to this wily plain- 
tiff, the Importing Trust, thus to say that much of 
its present-day arrogance and its puzzling intoler- 
ance are merely heritages from a triumphant past, 
when, with it, to demand was to receive, to com- 
mand was to be obeyed. What wonder that lordly 
members of the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, 
still regard us as but an English colony, where they 
may while away a portion of the year in taking from 
our toilers tolls on imported goods, only to go to 
Europe for the remainder of the year, to loll in lux- 
urious carriages, live in elegant palaces', and spend 
their Importing-Trust profits in a thousand ways 
of delight? For this they have always fought our 
client, American Production. But American Pro- 
duction would not down. From decade to decade 
it strugded on, often crushed by the weight of the 
power of this wily plaintiff, the Importins: Trust ; 
often wounded almost unto death by the blind folly 
of our own people, frenzied by the stealthy slanders 
of the Importing Trust, this wily plaintiff, which 



30 

then as now, hesitated at no measure for the de- 
struction of its adversary, our present client, Amer- 
ican Production. 

And so, your Honors, the wily plaintiff, the Im- 
porting Trust, has continued down to this very day, 
pursuing its happiness by the destruction of Ameri- 
can Production, at every point and in every way 
possible. From the necessities of the case, from 
the fact that it is a struggle as between life and 
death, we do not believe that there is any crime at 
which, as a concrete proposition, the wily plaintiff, 
the Importing Trust, would balk to work the final 
dissolution of American Production. It disguises 
itself in every way and makes' use of any and all 
agents to accomplish the injury of our client. 
When in its war against our client, after years of use 
of the naked blade of "Free Trade," our people had 
come to look with horror upon this weapon, as 
wielded by the Importing Trust, the wily plaintiff 
took care to conceal its real instrument of destruc- 
tion by giving it different names, among which your 
Honors will doubtless recall "Lower Taxation,'^ 
"Moderate Protection," "Free Kaw Materials," 
"Tariff Eeform" and "Eevenue Tariff," as some of 
those employed by the wily plaintiff a decade or two 
ago; and "Reciprocity," "Cuban Treaty," "Relief 
for the Cubans," "Relief for the Filipinos," "Reduc- 
tion of War Tariffs," "German Trade Agreement," 
"Stopping tlie Gathering of Gold in the Treasury," 
and "Tariff Revision," as some of the later subter- 
fuges' by which the wily plaintiff seeks to hide the 
keen edge of tlie Free Trade knife with which it 
cuts the tliroat of the fat bullock, American Domes- 
tic ]Market. 

But, your Honors, at the present moment the 
wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, is wielding 



31 

with all its power the bJacle a\ hich it calls ^^Tariif 
Revision"; and with ^'Tariff Eevislon" as a watch- 
word and the cry, ^^The American trusts are selling 
cheaper abroad than at home," it is trying once 
more to drive our people so crazy that they will turn 
and tear down our tariff dike which dams out the 
world's surplus goods and dams in the world's wan- 
dering capital, and let in the deluge, tie the hands 
of our workers by forcing capital to seek other 
scenes and send them all supperless to bed and 
many of them to untimely graves. Ah, your Hon- 
ors, if anything could justify this cruel war on all 
the workers of this country, it would surely be the 
happiness of so large and lordly a concourse of blue- 
blooded commercialists, as that which makes up 
very largely the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust. 
Who, then, make up the wily plaintiff, the Im- 
porting Trust, your Honors? In answer to the 
question, we say that far and away its larger por- 
tion is composed of importers of foreign goods', the 
fathers and grandfathers of many of whom were im- 
porters before them, in whose blood has come to be 
mixed a large spilling of the spice of aristocracy, 
and who look with proud intolerance on whatever 
seems to lend dignity and strength to our client, 
American Production. These people control the 
chambers of commerce of all our foreign-trading 
cities, which, under the tutelage of members of the 
wily plaintiff, pass resolutions declaring that "the 
people demand an early relief from the iniquities 
and burdens of the tariff by a substantial reduction 
of its rates" ; or that "we favor an immedate revi- 
sion of the tariff." These importers live in the 
most expensive quarters of their respective towns, 
drive imposing carriages, or thunder by in the larg- 
est automobiles, and everywhere sow the seeds of 



32 

respect for '^commerce" or ''international trade," 
showing, mean while by their opulence and magnifi- 
cence of living how profitable, for a hundred years 
past, they have found the business of emptying 
American savings banks. 

In addition to the hereditary and other importers 
engaged directly in vulgar trade, there is a wing of 
the Importing Trust which is not vulgar enough to 
engage in trade, being made up of Mayflower de- 
scendants of the silk-stocking variety. These peo- 
ple and their fathers before them w^ere born with 
golden spoons, diamond tipped, in their tiny mouths. 
They are blue-bloods of the purest ultra-marine. 
They are veritable Plymouth Rocks. They carry in 
their sacred persons all that is hardly worth saving 
in this Republic. Do they work? Never. They 
are the true and only class of exclusive '^consum- 
ers" in the country. When the newspapers of the 
Importing Trust say the ^'consumers'' must be con- 
sidered and the tariff tax abolished, they mean by 
"consumers" these people w^ho forever ''consume" 
and never "produce," these proud and w^ould-be 
aristocratic people who consider themselves a sepa- 
rate class, to serve which humbly and forever is the 
duty of the "laboring classes," by which term they 
mean all who are not rich enough to live without 
work and join the illustrious body of "consumers" 
and buy a pedigree. Believing that they are the 
whole show, and that the "laboring classes," like 
the birds and the grass, are mere inconsequential 
incidents of life here, they also believe that they 
should have their work done at the lowest price pos- 
sible through world-wide competition between 
workers; therefore their allusions to the "robber 
tariff" and "favored producers," as if they were de- 
nied their rights when a tariff dike keeps out the 



33 

ocean of foreign surplus products, the odds and 
ends of the world's bargain counters and bankrupt 
and fire-sale stocks, anxious to be sold here at worse 
than auction prices. There is another thing they 
have in mind also as their right, and one which 
would be re-established by a ^'revision" of the dike, 
and that is retinues of servants at European wages, 
which would be theirs if the dike were "revised," 
and our workers, turned out of our factories in 
starving swarms, should beset these choice "con- 
sumers" for jobs in kitchen, chamber, cellar and 
stable. For these reasons the silk-stocking, blue- 
blood "consumers" are enthusiastic members of the 
Importing Trust, and on every occasion root for 
"tariff revision," "reciprocity treaties," "German 
Trade Agreements," "Annexation of Canada," "an- 
nexation of Cuba," "free trade with the Philipines," 
"war on the trusts"— anything and everything to 
make their high living come at the lowest price, by 
exposing American workers to the deadliest com- 
petition. We cannot blame them for all this. 
Their brain cells are so arranged that they must 
ever be blood-suckers and never blood-producers. 
But the rest of us are fools if we do not understand 
them. 

Yet another wing of the Importing Trust is made 
up of college professors and other professional men 
who think that "revision" would make their broad- 
cloth cheaper but would not reduce their incomes. 
Having never "labored," in the vulgar sense of the 
word, they know nothing of the horrors of indiscrim- 
inate competition such as follows "tariff revision," 
the lowering of our dike and the inundation of the 
country with foreign surplus products. Some of 
them, it must be admitted, particularly the college 
professors and other awfully learned men, are quite 



34 

frequently the high-thinking devotees of the time- 
wasted cult of Free Trade, which they still piously 
worship at a shrine wherein, decades ago, the last 
venerated relic crumbled into dust. For they still 
whisper of Free Trade as earnestly and as rever- 
ently as though Adam Smith of England had not 
been dead since Adam Smith of Eden was a little 
boy and as though the world that the younger Adam 
Smith knew had not been so transformed economi- 
cally as to be unrecognizable by him if he returned 
to earth. It is a pious devotion in which these 
monks of the classic shades are engaged ; and should 
we blame or criticise them? Lo, do they not do even 
as we ourselves are doing — seek that side of life 
which grows the most sugar plums and the fewest 
cacti? 

Yet another wing of the Importing Trust, and a 
very powerful one, is made up by the steamship 
lines, notably those subsidized by the German Gov- 
ernment, either with cash or paternal well-wishing. 
We say ^^powerful,'' because back of the German 
lines, at least, stands the whole diplomatic corps of 
their home Government. Of course, they are 
straining every influence to "revise" our tariff dike, 
in behalf of heavier cargoes to this country. Again, 
who could find fault with them for the arrangement 
of their brain-cells? Or with us for such a brain- 
cellular arrangement that we recoil from German 
Trade Agreements fomented by German steamship 
lines and German diplomacy as from poison rep- 
tiles. Should it leave a pleasant taste in our 
American mouths to realize that our industries 
have been turned over to the tender merices of the 
German War-Lord by his friend, Herr Trustbuster? 

There is yet another wing of the Importing Trust, 
your Honors, which should receive our careful con- 



35 

sideratioii. We refer to that wing made up of cer- 
tain politicians who join themselves to the Import- 
ing Trust for no other purpose than to eat out of 
its hand. These politicians, by some strange freak 
of fortune, belong, generally, to the Democratic 
Party; and, mirabile dicta, very largely to the 
Southern Branch of that party, the members of 
which join in the assault upon our tariff dike, even 
though the Sunny South, with her wealth in cli- 
mate, soil and mine, and her marvellous develop- 
ment behind the tariff-dike since the Civil War, 
still needs the shelter of the dike, that her growth 
may not be arrested by the influx of tropical prod- 
ucts — needs it for her cotton, her sugar, her rice, 
her new-made textile mills and her flourishing foun- 
dries and machine shops. 

But it is very difficult to teach an old Southern 
political dog new tricks, even though new tricks 
mean the saving of his life. His forefathers w^ere 
Free Trade Democrats before him, and he can never 
be anything else. He never forgets and never 
learns. Although our lovely Southland was des- 
tined, under a tariff-dike, soon to become the 
wealthiest and proudest section of our country, 
these old politicians of the Importing Trust would 
still rule her life through a tradition which scorns 
our dike as a robber fortress. They are stuck in 
the same old bog in which they were hard and fast, 
"fo de wah"; and until they are gathered home to 
glory they will continue to believe down at Yazoo 
that Jefferson is still Allah and John Sharp Wil- 
liams is his prophet. 

Your Honors, we fear we may be tiring you by 
this long analysis of the wily plaintiff, the Import- 
ing Trust, but nothing is more important to the 
issues in this case tUan to know the motives which 



36 

lead the enemies of our client, American Produc- 
tion, to raise the battle-standard of "revision'^ at 
this time. We have not yet mentioned the wing of 
the Importing Trust which is perhaps the most dan- 
gerous because the most insidious in its method in 
attempting to wreck domestic industry. We refer, 
your Honors, to those American citizens who, while 
claiming American citizenship, make use thereof 
solely for the purpose of hypocritical claims which 
they hope to coin into gold, even at the price of seas 
of tears and mountains of suffering among the 
workers of this country. These people, your Hon- 
ors, are they who purchase forests, mines, and 
wheat fields in other countries, and these pa- 
triots, to get the benefit of Free Trade in our 
domestic market for their alien products, press 
for the annexation of Canada. We also have them 
owning sugar, rice, and tobacco lands in the Phil- 
lipine Islands, where they are also projectors of 
railroads, hemp-mills, and other manufacturing in- 
dustries, under a cost of subsistence — which is 
their cost of production — infinitely lower than we 
have here in our own bleak land. And these Phil- 
ippine patriots, under the lead of Secretary Taft, 
the great champion of "revision," a man quite unac- 
quainted with our client, American Production, 
and the terror which chills its spine at the threat 
of tropical competition, are beseeching the Con- 
gress of the United States to take down our tariff 
dike towards the Philippines, and so compass the 
death by starvation of thousands of our wage-pro- 
ducers here. But these members of the Import- 
ing Trust, the wily plaintiff herein, by arousing 
pity for the "poor Filipinos/' conceal their own 
interest in thus "revising" the dike towards the 
Philippines; just as American promoters of Cuban 



37 

sugar plantations, wlio were also members of the 
wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, concealed their 
personal interest in the Cuban-treaty outrage up- 
on American civilization, by spreading in the 
newspapers fictions as to the suffering of the "poor 
little Cubans," and by pretending that unless a 
"meed of justice'' were doled out to these "poor 
starving Cubans," in the way of a gap in our 
tariff dike, they would starve to death in great 
numbers. And the Importing Trust had the nerve 
to say that we had shut the "poor Cubans" out 
of the Spanish market by making the little fel- 
lows free and were about to kill them with hunger, 
unless by giving their jobs to the Cubans, we 
killed an equal number of American workers. 
Yes, your Honors, this wily plaintiff, the Import- 
ing Trust, with its sly hand in the wage fund of 
American workers, stood with great briny tears 
in its eyes, sniveling about the hardships these Cu- 
bans were enduring, in scenes of unheard of lux- 
uriance in fruit, vegetable and animal life, where 
yams spring up over night and where a two-cent 
cotton pocket handkerchief makes a burdensome 
suit of Sunday clothes, where no snow ever flies or 
frost ever falls, and where a hut of palm leaves is all 
the native needs for shelter. Ah, yes, your 
Honors, they were starving to death on a bushel 
of bananas and a barrel of yams and a wild tur- 
key a day apiece; and Senor Trustbuster relieved 
their suffering by giving them the Cuban treaty, 
which ripped a gap in the tariff dike and put a 
bonus of many millions a year in the pocket of the 
American Sugar Refining Company, to be distrib- 
uted pro rata among the starving Cubans — we 
dont think. 
These Cuban exploiters, members of the 



38 " 

Importing Trust, are they who slily foment 
disorder in Cuba and fill our newspapers at times 
with talk of its annexation to the United States; 
for, your Honors, that would mean the total level- 
ing of our tariff -dike towards Cuba, which would 
be much better even than a Cuban Treaty which 
only lowered it. But no greater calamity could 
possibly befall American civilization, your Hon- 
ors, than either free trade with the Philippines or 
annexation of Cuba. For all the world is 
struggling by hook or crook to get inside our 
tariff-dike with its goods; and all the world of 
unfixed capital w^ould overflow the Philippines, 
if we had free trade with them; and Cuba also if 
we annexed her; just for the privilege of free trade 
with our market here on the main land; and these 
tropical islands, with the cost of production not 
over one-fifth of its cost here, with inexhaustible 
natural resources of soil, and mineral, and forest, 
could and would ultimately produce a supply of 
all forms of goods ever thought of quite sufficient 
to meet our greatest demand here. And, your 
Honors, with Senor Trustbuster or some one 
selected by him, as for instance Mr. Taft, swing- 
ing the cudgel of patronage and threatening chas- 
tisement to our "insurgent'' Congressmen, who can 
sa}', your Honors, how far the wily plaintiff could 
not go in securing free trade with the Philippines, 
a renewal of the Cuban Treaty, or the annexation 
of Cuba? Senor Trustbuster "loveth best who 
tickleth best," and it may be Mr. Taft does, too. 
And who shall say that the Importing Trust would 
never succeed in tickling either of these gentle- 
men to as profitable an effect as Baron Speck Yon 
Sternburg tickled Herr Trustbuster? 

Your Honors, it may be ungracious to Herr 



89 

Trustbuster, but in his treatment of tlie people 
of this country in his Cnban Treaty and his Ger- 
man Agreement, it seems to us he has acted simply 
as if he were the proprietor of a great estate, with 
the right to give of that estate as much as he 
pleased to whom he pleased and to whom pleased 
him. For he has given a vast slice of our domestic 
market to the Cuban exploiting member of the 
wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, and another 
great slice to his flatterers and pretended admirers 
in the German Empire, and in each case he has 
entirely ignored our Congress as much as a Ger- 
man nobleman, in the disposition of his property, 
could possibly have ignored his footman. Does 
Herr Trustbuster ever stop to think, your Honors, 
that he is the servant and not the master of our 
people? Does he ever stop to think that these 
United States are not his own shooting park? Does 
he realize that our domestic market is our civili- 
zation, our domestic life, of which we cannot give 
away a single dollar's worth, without giving away 
just so much of our civilization and our lives? 
We regret to s'ay, your Honors, that Herr Trust- 
buster makes us think that he really looks upon 
our people and their sacred interests very much 
as he might upon a basket of fish caught in his 
own Oyster Bay or a bagfull of game shot in his 
own woods, which he might distribute at will 
among his favorites at court. He has given us 
away to the wealthy Importing-Trust Cubans. He 
has lavished us upon his favorites of the German 
race. And rumor says that, ere long. Monsieur 
Trustbuster will have succumbed also to French 
flattery and have poured us out with equal gener- 
osity over the industrial reaches of la helle France! 
And will he crown it all in the coming Congress 



40 

with scattering us as a handful of alms over all 
the industrial peoples of the earth, by corraling the 
"insurgent" Congressmen, in his own strenuous 
way, and clubbing Philippine Free Trade through 
Congress, and thus opening us to Free Trade with 
the whole world through the Philippine Hole in 
the Wall? How long, O your Honors, how long! 



THE UNION OF THE WILY PLAINTIFF^ THE IMPORT- 
ING TRUST^ AND THE WILY PLAINTIFF^ THE EX- 
PORTING TRUST, IS A MOST UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
FOR THE ASSASSINATION OF OUR CLIENT, 
AMERICAN PRODUCTION, 

May it please your Honors, we have thus traced 
as nearly as we can with our present data an 
outline of the various branches of the wily plain- 
tiff, the Importing Trust; and we now proceed to 
give you some notion of the origin and the general 
nature of the partner in sin of the wily plaintiff, 
the Importing Trust, that is to say the Exporting 
Trust. 

Some years back, how many we cannot say, the 
wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, took unto itself 
a wife, and was joined in the bonds of a most unholy 
wedlock, the infatuated maiden who consented to 
the union being none other than Miss American 
Special Producing Interests. The union was fol- 
lowed in the course of nature by the birth of a 
lusty boy, whom the happy twain carried immedi- 
ately to the High Priest named "Foreign Trade'' 
and had christened under the name of "The Ex- 



41 

porting Trust." This lusty baby, in due time, 
came to man's estate, and though the offspring 
of a marriage of convenience, and, as an independ- 
ent proposition, having no special affection for its 
sire, it soon began to assist its father in secret 
raids upon our tariff-dike, the advantage it sought 
being the free importation of ''raw materials" t^ 
work up into its own products, for sale, primarily, 
in our domestic market, and, secondarily, in the 
far-famed "markets of the world." 

One wing of the Exporting Trust, your Honors, 
is represented by certain Massachusetts manufact- 
urers, notably those of shoes, who want to import 
"raw materials" free. The mongrel blood within 
their veins is seen in the fact that, in order to in- 
crease their profits already large from their mar- 
ket here behind the tariff-dike, they are willing 
that all other producers in the United States 
should be exposed to a low dike, provided the dike 
shall still remain high over against their own fac- 
tories. For example, the shoe manufacturers of 
Brockton demand that all the farmers in the coun- 
try sihould lose |3 or |4 a hide, in order that the 
shoe manufacturers themselves, in addition to the 
large profit secured them by selling goods here 
safely behind the tariff-dike, may have the profit 
which would come to them if they could make 
American farmers sell hides as cheaply as they 
are sold in the world outside. In other words they 
want free trade in what they buy and protection 
in what they sell. 

"We also mention, as belonging to the Exporting 
Trust, the Minnesota millers who enjoy a high 
tariff-dike on flour, and thereby secure our entire 
home market; but who desire "free wheat" from 
Canada, so they may add to their tariff-profit the 



42 

profit to be made by compelling our wheat-raisers 
to compete with Canada for the custom of the mil- 
lers of Minnesota. 

We might further mention other manufactu- 
rers, members of the Exporting Trust, who are elo- 
quent for "revision" of the dike, so far as it touches 
tlieir "raw materials," all of which are the finished 
products of their sister industries in this country; 
but are as eloquent in declaring that so far as 
their own products are concerned, the tariff-dike 
is now none too high. 

We particularly desire to place this mark of 
the sorocide on the brow of all those members of 
the Exporting Trust who manufacture patented 
articles and ask that the dike be "revised" because 
it is useless to them, who are already protected 
both by domestic and by foreign patents, and who 
are the only real "monopolists" in this country. 
For these people gladly assist the wily plaintiffs 
to destroy the dike, not, your Honors, that they 
may "conquer the markets of the world" through 
free "raw materials," but, God pity them! 
that they may force American wage-producers 
here to work at foreign wages in making these 
patented goods for this market, in order that these 
manufacturers may put the difference between the 
American and the foreign pay-rolls in their 
pockets. The fact is that most of our manufact- 
urers of patented things already have plants abroad 
nnd so, for goods to be sold abroad, already have 
tlie btmefit of foreign Avages. But not satisfied 
AA'ith that, tliey wish the tariff -dike "revised" so 
the workers in tlieir factories here will be com- 
pelled to work for foreign wages also, as we have 
a 1 ready said. 

Tims theso memlx^rs of (lie Exporting Trust give 



4S 

aid and comfort to the wily plaintiff, the Import- 
ing Trust, in its crusade against the tariff-dike 
and its demands for "revision'' of the tariff; and 
when these manufacturers also root for "revision," 
the newspaper claque of the Importing Trust says, 
"Lo, the manufacturers themselves, these infant 
industries, to protect which the tariff-dike was 
built, demand "revision." Is not this proof that 
the time has arrived for a general "revision down- 
ward" of this barbarous dike, this Chinese wall, 
seeing that even they whom it was built to shelter 
consider it an evil?" 

Your Honors, when we see the depths to which 
our own people will dive in the slums of selfish- 
ness; when we see how ready human nature is 
to eat human flesh, American manufacturers, 
^^ho think they have no further need of protection 
to absorb into their economies the very substance 
of other American manufacturers and their em- 
ployees, it requires all the philosophy over which 
we have command not to wish our brain-cells were 
so arranged as to make us approve the banishment 
of these flesh-eating monsters to the Cannibal 
Islands. But our brain-cells will not let us. 



44 



VI 



THE SOLE RAISON D^ETRE OF THE WILY PLAINTIFF^ 
THE IMPORTING TRUST^ IS THE SPOLIATION OF 
THIS COUNTRY. THE SOLE EFFECT OF ITS OPERA- 
TIONS IS TO TAKE FROM AND NEVER ADD TO THE 
WEALTH OF THIS NATION. 

We humbly submit, your Honors, looking back 
at a century of our national life, that the wily 
plaintiff, the Importing Trust, is figuratively 
speaking, a sheep-stealer and nothing but a sheep- 
stealer, prowling among the producing flocks of 
this country. It has not even any relation what- 
ever to any exchange of products whereby its in- 
juries are in any manner offset. Its generic 
nature is that of the freebooters, marauders and 
pirates, its real forefathers, who but a short time 
ago swept the seas for plunder. Its sole function 
now is to skim off the cream of wealth from the 
milk of industrial activity which flows from the 
prolific udder of this industrious nation. It differs 
from the old-time pirates only in the fact that it 
snatches the wealth of a whole nation at once in- 
stead of that of single merchantmen; and instead 
of making but one ship's crew walk the plank at 
a sitting, it puts to death hundreds of thousands 
of people, by actual starvation, mental anxiety, 
de«r)air and suicide, all in the course of a single 
raid won this country's emplovment. The finan- 
cial havoc which, from a single victory over the 
cold sense of our people and a single breach in 
our tariff dike, it works in the a2r<rregate upon 
this country's wealth, runs into billions of dol- 



45 

lars. Ten times more destructive than our great 
Civil War, when Northern Greek met Southern 
Greek in deadly combat, is but a single triumph 
over us of this wily plaintiff in its battle of false- 
hood and feigning, through which alone it suc- 
ceeds. And here is a point, your Honors, to which 
we call your most serious attention: This wily 
plaintiff has hit on the trick of using in its behalf 
the diplomatic corps of foreign nations and, by 
the devious ways of diplomacy, breaking our tariff- 
dike which dams out the ocean of foreign surplus 
goods!. Only recently it secured the aid of the 
Great German War Lord and his cabinet and all 
the power of the Keichstag to force Herr Trust- 
buster to do the dirty work of this' wily plaintiff, 
the Importing Trust. And be it said in shame and 
sorrow, Herr Trustbuster humbly knelt and mur- 
mured his vows of vassalage to the Great War 
Lord; and turned over to the Importing Trust 
privileges which the workers of this country will 
pay for from their savings to the tune of not less 
than a billion dollars; unless our Congress shall 
call Herr Trustbuster to his senses, repudiate his 
allegiance to the German Empire, and stop the 
ruin to our industries, which is already a cloud 
black and broad with disaster above our fields and 
factories. This only illustrates further what we 
have before said, your Honors, namely, that the 
Importing Trust is merely a diplomatic robber 
and freebooter, a relic of the ante-industrial days, 
when tribe matched tribe in theft of cattle, corn 
and maidens. The Importing Trust is not an in- 
dustrial factor. It is usurer, thief or assassin, 
commercially speaking; and when it fails of suc- 
cess by its own dark ways here, it calls on an 
emperor to outmatch ns in diplomacy; which is 



46 

as bad for us as having been beaten in bloody 
battle. 



VII 



THE OPERATIONS OF THESE WILY PLAINTIFFS AEE 
AGAINST THE INTERESTS OF THE CIVILIZED 
! WORLD. 

Your Honors, all civilized nations produce all 
things requisite to their prosperity; and no such 
nation can supply any other such nation with an 
article the like of which either in form or effect 
the latter cannot itself produce; and as surely as 
the sun shines and shades, no organization like 
either of these plaintiffs can do international 
business without injury to the great body of the 
people concerned. For all the active people of 
any country are producers of one of three grades. 
Eitlier they labor for wages and are wage-produ- 
cers; or, by the employment of wage-producers, 
turn out some kind of property to sell to others, 
and are, therefore, property-producers; or assist 
in the preservation, transportation, or distribution 
of property, and are therefore what might be called 
"adjunct-producers." There are none other than 
these among the active people of any country, who 
do any kind of work, whether of hand or brain, 
or both. Even doctors, lawyers, ministers, bank- 
ers, insurance men, telegraphers, telephonists, 
blacksmiths, tinsmiths, plumbers, masons, paint- 
ers, carpenters, and clerks, stewards, porters, and 
watchmen, soldiers, sailors, and errand boys fall 
into one or the other of these groups, every one 



47 

of them dependent upon making domestic g^^ods, 
real or personal, that is, property-production; 
and all the other people in a country, unless either 
too young or too old or too sick to work, are 
tramps, which includes the ''consumers," whose 
case the Importing Trust so eloquently pleads in 
its arugment for the substitution here of foreign 
in the place of domestic goods. We repeat, prac- 
tically all the people of every nation are produ- 
cers and depend upon production for their lives. 
The more meager their production, the more 
meager their lives; the more abundant, the more 
abundant their lives in happiness and the fullness 
of civilization. 

It follows that to import any article into any 
such country, is to prevent increased production 
in that country and so increased civilization and 
happiness. For either the exact like of it or an 
article which would answer the same purpose, 
could have been made by the producers of that 
country, and they would have had the benefit of the 
increase in production, which would have in- 
creased the demand for wage-producers and so 
have raised wages and have caused a wider dis- 
tribution of wealth, the rich becoming somewhat 
less rich and the poor somewhat less poor. 

But that is not the whole story. To import an 
article is not merely to prevent domestic produc- 
tion from increasing, but to make it decrease by 
a certain definite amount. For the imported ar- 
ticle meets in its foreign market a similar domes- 
tic article, or the ability to make it, which is the 
same thing; and either the domestic article under- 
bids the imported article or it remains unsold. In 
either case, the imported article makes the sup- 
ply greater than before in comparison with de- 



48 

mand, and, the wages of the wage-producer fall- 
ing, instead of a wider there is a narrow^er dis- 
tribution of wealth, and the rich become somewhat 
richer and the poor somewhat poorer. 

Suppose, however, your Honors, that it was not 
the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, but rather 
its partner in sin, the Exporting Trust, that had 
been at work ; and instead of coming into the coun- 
try, the article had gone out of the country. In 
that case, the country's supply w^ould have been re- 
duced, demand would have forged ahead of sup- 
ply, and the p^ice would have risen in the home 
market; which would be the same as a reduction 
of wages. Evej' though the export of the article 
should continue and the increased demand for 
wage-producers in that special line of production 
should raise wages to their former level, in the in- 
terval, the wage producers would have had the loss 
occasioned by increased prices. But, in time, the 
congestion of labor on fewer occupations would 
lower wages by competition among workers in 
those occupations and so offset any original up- 
ward movement of wages, arising from increasefl 
demand for a special product. And in any event, 
should the price of the exported article rise and 
wages finally rise to offset the price, the country 
would have gained nothing, but would have merely 
balanced accounts ; and the net result of the opera- 
tion would have been the making of the rich mem- 
bers of the Exporting Trust somewhat richer and 
the country's wage-producers somewhat poorer. 

In no events, your Honor, could any transaction 
of the wily plaintiffs bring profit to the nation as 
a whole; and their operations must always disturb 
wage-production, to the greater or less harm of all 
the wage-producers of the country. 



49 

Looking at the matter from another point of 
view, your Honors, these plaintiffs cause a loss to 
the nation in every transaction to which they are 
parties, their operations being like those of the 
pickpocket who steals a watch and pawns it for 
half its cost to the owner. For they pick the pocket 
of the American wage-producer of some opportun- 
ity to work and pawn the swag abroad at far less 
than its real value to the original owner. If, your 
Honors, you will refer to your Wealth of Nations, 
by the economist, Adam Smith, you will find tha:t 
he says where people in a country buy and sell 
among themselves it is twice as good for the coun- 
try as where they buy and sell in foreign countries, 
because when the trade is all done at home both 
ends of it benefit the country with their respective 
gains; whereas if only half of the trade is at home, 
the country gets only the gain in that half. Now 
these wily plaintiffs never do any business in which 
both ends of the trade are in this country; so that 
whatever they do, they are firing away abroad half 
of the wealth all of which should belong to us. We 
think Mr. Smith is right in his idea, which seems 
to be that if you sell a steam-fire-engine in France 
and take an automobile in exchange, you are not as 
well off as if you had sold your steam-fire-engine to 
some other Yankee in exchange for his automobile. 
For the half- French trade only leaves to the coun- 
try the automobile, while the ail-American trade 
leaves to it both the automobile and the engine, 
with all the benefit remaining here, which could 
come from the manufacture of both machines, bene- 
fit in the way of the employment of wage-producers 
and the demand of their wages on our market. To 
make the half-French trade as good as the all- 
American, France would have to send us back not 



50 

only the automobile but another steam-fire-engine, 
too, without extra charge. Of course that is silly to 
suggest, and shows how silly is international trade. 

But the worst of it is, your Honors, we may not 
get even the half of the trade, because instead of 
our sending France an engine in exchange for an 
automobile, France may refuse anything but gold; 
and so, in exchange for an automobile which will 
soon wear out and never inspire industry to make 
wealth again, we send to France permanent wealth, 
which can go on inspiring industry to make wealth 
to the end of time. We have exchanged a living 
spirit for a clammy corpse. We have paid for our 
automobile with a section of our producing power, 
now lost to us forever; and whatever the size to 
which our industrial stature may grow in the fu- 
ture, it must always be smaller by the size of the 
section thus lost to France. And these wily plain- 
tiffs are the perpetual agents of such losses as this. 

"Ah !" exclaims counsel for the Importing Trust, 
"you cannot sell unless you buy. If you wish oth- 
ers to buy of you, you must also buy of them. All 
international trade is but a system of exchanges, 
in which goods from one nation are paid for with 
goods from another nation." 

Your Honors, this falsehood is the stock in trade 
of these wily plaintiffs. It is the worst one they 
tell. For we can go on buying of foreign nations 
without ever sending them a pound of goods; and 
they can go on buying of us, without ever sending 
us a pound of goods. We need only stop buying 
of them when they refuse to trust us any longer; 
and they need only stop buying of us when we re- 
fuse to trust them any longer. We can buy of 
them without selling to them, until we owe them 
so much they can come over and take our property 



51 

for the debts. They can bu}^ of us without selling 
to us until they owe us so much that we can go 
over and take their property for the debt. It all 
depends on how long credit holds out, when the end 
will come and the sheriff^s sale to the creditor will 
close the chapter. For after all it is not nations 
but individuals who are trading with each other, i't 
is just the same between dealers in different coun- 
tries as it is between dealers in the same country. 
The sum of international trade, is but the sum of 
the tradings of individuals, carried on as individ- 
uals, governed by the same rights and made equita- 
ble by the same remedies belonging to individuals. 

And all these international individuals in trade 
are looking for the specific profit to them in each 
trade, and the foundation of that profit is not 
friendship, "bujing of you because you buy of me," 
but the relative cost of goods. It is not comity but 
cost which governs all trade, international or other- 
wise. It is not because we are kind enough to im- 
port that we have the privilege of exporting. And 
it is not because we are unkind enough to export 
that we also find it in our hearts to import. The 
wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, knows only too 
well that there is no logical or other necessary con- 
nection between it and the wily plaintiff, the Ex- 
porting Trust, except in their common raids upon 
our tariff-dike. 

Both of these wily plaintiffs know that each 
goes its own way in foreign trade quite careless as 
to the fate of the other. Each does as much bus- 
iness as it can, at the widest margin of gain it can 
make, and puts the winning in its own private box. 
And we repeat, at the bottom of each transaction o'f 
either of these plaintiffs lies the mainspring of com- 
mercial action, viz., relative cost. And we know 



r,9. 



that the motto of these wily plaintiffs is this : "Buy 
in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market;" 
and that they are strangers to the motto ; "Buy only 
of him who buys of you." The only way in which the 
wily plaintiff, the Exporting Trust could cause us 
to import, would be to sell off so much of our goods 
in foreign markets that prices would get so high 
here that the Importing Trust would make money 
even on goods brought over our dike. And the only 
way in which the Importing Trust could make us 
export, would be to fill us so full of foreign goods 
that our unemployed people would be so poor that 
they would work for wages so low that the wily 
plaintiff the Exporting Trust could send goods 
abroad in spite of low wages abroad, and thus coin 
the bodies and souls of our wage-producers into 
gold for its till.* And, your Honors, it pains our 
compassionate brain-cells to think it, but way down 
in our hearts we believe that these wily plaintiffs 
when they practically say, "If you keep on export- 
ing you surely will import; and if you keep on im- 
porting, you surely will export," really mean that 
prices will get so high, in the first place, and wages 
so low, in the second place, that goods will pass 
between us and foreign countries, in the way we 
have said. But we can scarcely understand the 
sort of a heart that could be so cruel as to deceive 
our innocent wage-producers to their own undoing 
in this way. True, goods might pass in this way; 
but, as we have said, not because of any agreement 
by which goods should be paid for with goods; but 



* For over two generations, Great Britain, by Free Trade, 
has been thus coining the bodies and souls of her workers into 
profits for her Importing and Exporting Trusts, the fact being 
that the members of these Trusts embrace all the wealth and 
nobility of the British Islands, whose natural spoil British 
workers seem to be. 



53 

because of the alternate starvations of the wage- 
producers in competing countries. And because of 
goods passing as a consequence of alternate starva- 
tions, these wily plaintiffs are given a panorama at 
which to point, and say, "See, it is just as we said. 
There go goods abroad in exchange for our im- 
ports; see how goods are paid for with goods!" 
Could anything be more perfidious, your Honors! 
Could brain-cells ever dip to deeper depths of turp- 
itude than that ! 

What is the object of this cheating of our wage- 
producers by these wily plaintiffs, 3^our Honors? 
Why, only to build a theory of international ex- 
changes with which to justifj^ their doings. The 
ImiDorting Trust wants to be so it can say to Amer- 
ican wage-producers, "If you take my goods, which 
I offer so cheap, m^^ partner, the Exporting Trust, 
will take the goods which you make and will sell 
them abroad, and so increase your employment. 
For if you import, you must surely export.'' And 
the Exporting Trust wants to be so it can also say 
to wage-producers, "If you want to work for me 
making goods for export, you must help me break 
the dike in order that we may import. For if we 
export, we must surely import;" while it hides the 
fact that what it really wants is free "raw" wages 
and "raw materials" and a greater profit for it- 
self. 

We have proven that cost and not comity, your 
Honors, decides whether there shall be an exchange 
of goods, and so whether the injurj^ done us by the 
wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, shall be offset 
by a kindness done us by the wily plaintiff, the Ex- 
porting Trust, as these wily plaintiffs in chorus 
claim; therefore the question whether the wily 
plaintiff, the Exporting Trust, will thus pour oil 



54 

upon us and bind up om- Importing-Trust wounds, 
must depend upon the fact whether or not we can 
produce goods more cheaply than any other coun- 
try on earth, and not at all upon any mysterious 
connection between imports and exports, and vice 
versa. 

Now, your Honors, if we remember that when 
the dike is "revised'' it must be "revised'' for all 
countries in the world alike, it falls out that, un- 
der a "revised" dike the country we would have to 
beat in cheapness of production would be the coun- 
try made up by all the rest of the world outside 
of our boundaries, including Canada, Cuba, and 
the Philippines; and it does not seem possible that 
we could beat all this great tract of country in any- 
thing at all, except in a few things perhaps, and 
for a very short time, before the world had stolen 
all our machinery and methods. For, your Hon- 
ors, we are but one-sixteenth as great in land- 
area and population, and therefore have but one- 
sixteenth as much natural wealth, labor, and 
capital, as this great country with which we have 
to compete. This fact of difference in size alone 
should make it seem like a reckless thing for us to 
throw down our barriers and jump into a hand- 
to-hand contest in trade with the rest of the earth. 
Why, your Honors, this great outside country is a 
very busy place. People there everywhere are mak- 
ing all sorts of things the same as we are, only 
more so, in proportion to the size of their country; 
and, just like us, they must pile up a whole lot 
of things they don't want. Why, your Honors, the 
fire and bankrupt, closing-out and winding-up 
stocks in all that great country ought to be about 
as large in volume as all the goods we use from 
year to year; and we know that if it was our mat- 



55 

ter, we would sell off dog cheap and at any price 
we could get all those odds and ends and damaged 
goods that we did not want) to store in our own 
attic. And what is troubling us, your Honors, is 
the question whether or not this heap of half or 
quarter price goods that the world wants to get 
rid of, would not come piling in here over our "re- 
vised" dike so fast and so furious and in such 
volume that, no matter how cheap we came to make 
things here ourselves, this bargain-counter stuff 
Avould drown out our own market here for our own 
goods forever and a day. You see, your Honors, 
with a pile of cast-offs like this, the sellers would 
not stop for price. The main thing would be to be 
rid of it and if not at one price, at another. For 
nobody's bread and butter depends on selling such 
goods. All you get is velvet. Now would not "re- 
vising" our dike just make of this country a sort 
of catch-basin in ihe valley into which the nations 
of the earth could just pour off their waste pro- 
ducts in this way and would not such waste pro- 
ducts alone be enough to keep our markets 
r-rammed until our wage-producers were starved to 
death? We think, at any rate, your Honors, that 
it is worth while to dream a little further over this 
point before we take the leap in the dark. 

Then, your Honors, before we do a rash thing, 
we should think a moment on the point of whether 
or not our whole country is as well situated to do 
things cheap as all the rest of the earth together. 
We know, when we stop to think, that the real coist 
of what a man makes is what he spends in mak- 
iuir it. And what is that, your Honors'? Is it not 
what he pays for the stuff he works on in making 
something else out of it? But that stuff cost some- 
body else to make what the somebody had to pay 



56 

out while making it; so that our workman's "raw 
material" costs him what the other fellow spent. 
Then, in addition to his "raw material," does what 
he makes not cost him what he spends to keep him- 
self alive and well while he is making it? And is 
not that his food, clothing and shelter? Then is 
not the cost of the whole thing when he finishes it, 
the cost of the food, clothing and shelter of the man 
who made his "raw materiaF' while making it, 
added to what it cost him for these same things 
while doing his part of the work ? And it is not this 
all cost of subsistence, and is it not right to say, 
Cost of subsistence is cost of production? We thinly 
so at least. Now if cost of subsistence is what 
things cost, do not you think, your Honors, that, 
before we "revise" our dike, it would be well to find 
out if others in the outside world cannot live Just 
as well as we do but a good deal more cheaply? 
We should think so. Now, your Honors, everybody 
knows that it is cheaper to live where the sun grows 
plenty of grass and other vegetables, and lets you 
stroll around a la Mother Eve, and makes a bam- 
boo hut all you need for shelter, than where you 
have to grow your food all in three or four months 
in the year, wear heavy clothing most of the time 
and have a lathed and plastered, battened and 
calked house over your head. Now, your Honors, 
looked at in this way, what parts of the earth are 
the dearest to live in and what the cheapest? 
Would you not say that the poles of the earth, 
where winter blights the year round were the dear- 
est spots, and the tropics, where summer blesses the 
year 'round were the cheapest? And would not 
you say that subsistence would be dearer, the near- 
er the poles you were, and cheaper the nearer 
the tropics you were? That is the way it seems 



57 

to us, at least. Now, your Honors, the highest lat- 
itude is at the poles and the lowest at the equator ; 
that is, the colder it is, the higher the latitude, and 
the warmer, the lower. So that as your latitude 
increases cold increases, and as your latitude de- 
creases, cold decreases; so that the sun's heat, and, 
as we have found, the cost of subsistence, and so 
the cost of goods, vary directly as latitude varies. 
Therefore, we can say. Cost of subsistence, which is 
cost of production, varies directly with latitude. 
This seems, your Honors, like getting down to the 
bed-rock of cost; and when we look at it in that 
way and realize that about 20,000,000 square miles 
of the world's land-surface lies in lower latitudes, 
and therefore lower costs of production than we, 
about 14,000,000 square miles of which lies in the 
tropics, or in the area of lowest possible cost, it be- 
gins to look as if, taking things all 'round, even 
mildly to "revise" our tariff dike, is a little more 
than risky, if our continuing to live in this happy 
land at all is a thought we fondly cherish. The 
cards are against us, your Honors, doesn't it seem 
so to you? 

"Ah," says counsel for the wily plaintiff, "but 
we have the most inexhaustible and the richest 
stores of "raw materials" in the world, and we can 
beat the universe on that account." 

Does this look likely to you, your Honors? Does 
it look likely that one-seventeenth of the earth has 
more and better things in it than sixteen-seven- 
teenths? We would not insult you by thinking you 
think so, your Honors. 

And now, your Honors, if all international trade 
is only an exchange of goods, as the free traders 
say ; and if latitudes lower than ours can make all 
the kinds of goods that we can make, and many 



58 

that we cannot make at all; and we can make all 
the kinds of goods made by higher latitudes than 
ours, and many that they cannot make at all ; how 
can we exchange with lower latitudes, if all our 
goods are dearer than theirs; and how can the 
higher latitudes exchange with us, if all their goods 
are dearer than ours? In a word, why should a 
lower latitude ever buy anything of a higher? And, 
if it should prove that international trade is not 
merely an exchange of goods alone but one of cash 
and credit as well, how could there be free trade 
between all latitudes without the lower latitudes 
soon owning the higher — that is, without the higher 
latitudes selling all of themselves to the lower for 
products of the lower? 

But, suppose, your Honors, the learned counsel 
were correct and some parts of the world could 
produce some things more cheaply than we, and we 
some things more cheaply than they; what pledge 
have we that, of the cheaper things, which they can 
make, they will always produce a sufficient quan- 
tity, not only for themselves but for all the world 
less favorably situated; and will always keep from 
producing at all any of those thinjrs which we can 
produce more cheaply? What pledge have we that 
they will not corner their own cheaper product and 
hand it out to us at a price so high that we might 
better have produced it ourselves, even at a higher 
cost, rather than to have depended on their con- 
stant industry and fairness? And if we keep from 
nroducinir a particular thing in order to import it 
from n cheaper country, what earnest have we that 
tl)e crops mny not fail there, or tlmt some war or 
other circumstance may not so reduce the supply 
that the price will go very high and make us pay 
such a bonus for a single year's supply that if we 



59 

had made it ourselves' even at our higher cost, we 
would not have lost as much as by having trusted 
to a foreign supply? 

There is another point, your Honors, right in 
this connection : If we agree to the rule that we 
are only to make what we make cheapest and ex- 
change it for what other countries make cheapest, 
may we not find that we have natural stores large 
enough to last only during a reasonable time even 
if we make things only for ourselves and not for 
other counti'ies at all? 

If that is so, ought we not to make some things 
ourselves, even at a somewhat higher present cost 
to us than the present cost abroad, rather than get 
them from other countries in exchange for articles 
made by us, the cheap raw materials for which in 
our country must one day be entirely exhausted, 
leaving us thereafter at the mercy of the rest of 
the world and its higher cost for materials the 
cheap stores for which we had so foolishly squan- 
dered ? At the very best, is this plan of the learned 
counsel for plaintiffs anything more than for a 
postponement of relative deamess for us? And 
taking a long look ahead, is it not possible that, if, 
til rough making all things for ourselves, we pocket 
a present loss, we may later enter upon a perpetual 
,Gain ; and that, if through foreign exchanges, we 
pocket a present gain, we may later enter upon a 
perpetual loss? Does it not thus seem, after all, 
your Honors, as if all foreign trade were a gamble 
and as if our wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, 
and its ignoble and base-born partner in sin, the 
Exporting: Trust, were gamblers in human lives for 
the benefit of their own purses alone? 

Another point, still, your Honors: If we adopted 
the plan of the learned counsel and made only cer- 



60 

tain things in which we excel in cheapness, would 
there be enough to do in making only those things 
to give us all work all the time? For, if not, that 
would make another leak in the bucket by which 
we might lose a great deal more than we would 
have lost by making also the things we left for 
other nations to make. 

Because the total cost of maintaining a nation, 
your Honors, is made up of the costs of all its citi- 
zens, at that degree of consumption which will 
keep each citizen in the most vigorous health. We 
humans are very complex machines — aggregations 
of cells, your Honors — and to make our income of 
energy balance its outgo we need a great deal more 
than just a fixed number of pounds of food. We 
need recreation, diversion, mental expansion, and 
a great variety of things to keep our brain-cells 
healthy and at their highest point of action respon- 
sive to our sensations and associations of ideas; 
and the cost of all this for the nation cannot fall 
below a certain point. Now, your Honors, this cost 
of subsistence is the burden which the nation has 
to bear; and like any other burden, it will be 
lighter per capita, the more hands are applied to 
its bearing. That is, if you increase the number 
of a nation's producers, you decrease for the nation 
the per capita cost of living. If you decrease the 
number, you increase the per capita cost. There- 
fore the policy which is best for the nation employs 
the greatest number of the nation's producers the 
greatest number of hours a day and at the highest 
degree of efficient effort. Because of this rule, 
your Honors, all the talk of the learned counsel 
in which he has so highly lauded these plaintiffs, 
sounds like an argument in favor of haphazard 
gambling rather than a plan which reckons with 



61 

all the conditions necessary to a nation's highest 
good. Yonr Honors, the only method in sight by 
which, with scientific certainty, the highest good of 
this nation may be assured cuts off these plaintiffs 
in their pack-peddling and gambling and makes of 
their members producers instead. For their opera- 
tions through foreign trade always result in less 
employment of producers here. Because on the 
one hand, as w^e have already several times said, 
the Importing Trust stops the exchange of products 
between two of our citizens by itself supplying the 
demand on which the exchange depended. This de- 
stroys the employment of the producer who cannot 
sell his product. It increases the labor supply 
without increasing domestic demand therefore, and 
so makes a labor glut which means idleness, hun- 
ger and decline to labor ; at the same time, by mak- 
ing men idle, it makes fewer the burden-bearers, 
and therefore increases the per capita burden of 
the nation's subsistence. And, on the other hand, 
the Exporting Trust increases prices by sending 
goods abroad and thus diminishing supply; de- 
creases wages by crowding wage-producers upon 
a smaller number of occupations; assists foreign 
countries to live cheaply by the exhaustion of our 
natural stores; and generally aids the Importing 
Trust in putting off that industrial equilibrium 
which would one day follow the cutting out of these 
plaintiffs and the direction of our whole domestic 
demand, to our whole domestic supply. 

We repeat, your Honors, that we believe that, 
by no hocus-pocus of these plaintiffs, and by no 
juggling with foreign trade, can the cost of this 
nation's maintenance be less than that which it 
would be if no foreign business were done, and, 
the entire domestic supply being absorbed by the 



62 

domestic demand, we averaged up the over-cost 
which we suffered in some directions with the un- 
der-cost we enjoyed in others. We believe, your 
Honors, that expert people could ascertain the 
average cost which we would have to pay by rely- 
ing upon ourselves, and that this average cost could 
be denoted by a number related to some standard; 
and that this index cost-number as it could be 
called, would alw^ays remain the same as long as 
we relied on ourselves alone; but for the many rea- 
sons already given in detail, would increase when- 
ever we traded abroad. 

Your Honors, the more this matter is thought- 
fully weighed, the more it seems that the only ones 
who would not be injured by "revising'^ the dike 
downward, would be these plaintiffs; and that if 
in an wise they were benefited, it would be by a 
corresponding injury to this nation. 

It is certain, your Honors, that, in their desire 
(o "revise'' the tariff dike, and let in the ocean 
\^'hich rages to lay waste our fair fields of industry, 
these wily plaintiffs are moved by the lowest mo- 
tives which ever have birth in human brain cells; 
namely, those which satisfj^ appetite by taking 
innocent human life. For they must know that 
in a deluge which folloAVs a broken dike, there is 
always death for many thousands of us; whereas, 
on the contrary, our lives are safe and our nation 
thrives and grows greater, the higher the dike and 
the more surely it keeps out foreign goods. For 
the dike enables us to appropriate for our own civ- 
ilization and progress all the wealth growing be- 
liind it since tln^'e is no way for wealth to be spilled 
out of the country except through a breach therein. 
And thev must also bo aAvaro that an "unrevised^' 



63 

dike means a more wide (lisliibiition of our wealth, 
in the ways we have so fully explained before. 

What we say, your Honors, may be summed up 
in one short sentence, namely, close the ports, cut 
oft' foreign trade in both directions, and jjrices will 
fall and w^ages rise until ^^trusts" are no more and 
all American capital is earning the same as that 
earned by capital abroad. And that means the wid- 
est possible distribution of wealth among all our 
people. 

But it is against this very distribution of our 
w^ealth among the wage-producers that these wily 
plaintiffs strive with all their might, Avhen they 
push for dike "revision" dow^nward. For they do 
not wish our wage-earners also to become property- 
producers, as the latter are rapidly becoming from 
their economies and savings, which now figure 
nearly four billions. They do not want property- 
producers here to become so numerous that prices 
^\ill fall so low that the plaintiffs will no longer 
have any excuse to cry out that the "trusts" are 
selling more cheapy abroad than at home ; but they 
wish the gathering wealth of our wage-producers 
to be scattered again to the four winds of heaven, 
in order that they themselves may still make for- 
tunes in brokerages and commissions on foreign 
trade with us. You see, therefore, your Honors, 
that our tariff dike is a nation-building device, 
while the plaintiffs are a nation-destroying com- 
bination, one which pursues such a course that, if 
it were not ever and anon checked by our more 
enlightened people, our end would be final impov- 
erishment, the reversion of our civilization to the 
most primitive conditions, and the ownership of 
all our land by a handful of grandees. Is it not 
strange, your Honors, that the brain-cells of so 



64 

many of our people are arranged so peculiarly that 
such a combination is able from time to time to 
make this country ^'revise'^ its dike and set us all 
on the down-hill road? But so it is, your Honors, 
and alas, and alack, for the slip-shod arrangement 
of brain-cells under so many skulls ! For it would 
be far better for us if our beloved land Avere invaded 
by a barbarian army of millions, armed with all 
the most terrible engines of w^ar, than that our 
tariff-dike were thus ''revised" by these wily plain- 
tiffs. We would oust the barbarians quicker, bury 
our dead, rebuild our cities, strengthen our fort- 
resses and our defending armies, and, knowing by 
what we had been hit, be wise for the future. But 
these wily plaintiffs, appealing through their alien 
press to the basest passions of our people, inflict a 
more grievous injury than that possible by an armed 
invasion, and yet cover their work with such hy- 
pocrisy and mysticism that half of our wounded 
people never know by whom they were struck and 
very soon think the basest thoughts of these wily 
plaintiffs after them once more and assist to rouse 
the dikebusting fury that sleeps in the words ''The 
trusts sell more cheaply abroad than at home !'' 

Ah, your Honors, why do we not choose the more 
intelligent part, which is to quit stealing the sheep 
of others and to stop others stealing ours? Why 
do we not cut off entirely this barbarous matching 
of wits against wits, this playing of our national 
life against the lives of other nations? For in this 
day and generation, all foreign trade, is spolia- 
tion. It is the robbing of wage-producers of their 
opportunities to produce wages, and therefore 
their food, clothing and shelter. To sell our goods 
abroad is for us to despoil the wage-producers of 
the country in which we sell. While for any other 



65 

country to sell us its goods, is for that country to 
despoil wage-producers here. Because, as we said 
in the beginning of this head of our argument, all 
civilized countries are now able to produce all 
things necessary for their inhabitants; and for its 
highest development, every country through its 
own wage-producers, needs to produce every thing 
required to supply the wants of its people. This 
is so from the fact that the more opportunities 
people have to work for others, the greater the field 
of their action, and their means of reaching the 
farthest goal reachable by them. Not only so, but, 
by foreign trade to disperse these opportunities is 
to waste in idleness the energies of your workmen 
at home; energies for the existence of which the 
country pays; for either it must support its idle 
workmen from its poor fund, or let them die of 
starvation and so lose their energies altogether. 
On the other hand, to give its own wage-producers 
all the opportunities to work made by the wants 
of the nation is to give to them all they are entitled 
to have ; for no nation is entitled to greater wealth 
than that developed in supplying its own wants. 
. As we have said, your Honors, there is no causal 
relationship between the amount of business done 
respectively by the wily plaintiffs. But even if 
there were, no system of foreign exchange could 
help a nation to greater prosperity as a nation than 
it could help itself to by simply supplying all its 
own wants. For, as we have said before, any profit 
from foreign trade would go to these wily plain- 
tiffs alone, the net result to our wage-earners be- 
ing a loss. For, inasmuch as foreign trade must 
be in goods the like of which either by duplication 
or substitution, we produce at home, for us to buy 
abroad is to withhold from production at home and 



66 

congest our wage-producers upon a narrower field 
of work and so cause wages to fall; and this, your 
Honors, is to make but one industry grow where 
more than one grew before. But on the contrary, 
the more kinds of things we make, the more wealthy 
our people must become, because that gives more 
chances to work and employs workers in doing 
those very things they can do the easiest and best 
and therefore with the greatest returns. But not 
only so, your Honors, the diversification of indus- 
tries diversifies the objects of exchange; so that the 
wage-producer, in the wages which he receives for 
doing a single thing, has the equivalent of many 
things, of which, by proxy, he is himself the pro- 
ducer and, by virtue of his wages, the owner. This 
is to fill lives fuller and give a higher development 
to our citizenship ; for the wage-producer works for 
no other purpose than to be able to exchange his 
wages for goods. 

And right here, your Honors, we wish to refer 
again to our remark of a moment ago, when we 
said that foreign trade could not possibly give a 
nation greater prosperity than would come from 
the nation's supplying its own wants by the em- 
ployment of its own wage-producers. We repeat 
and confirm that remark and say that, with the na- 
tion's demand confined to its own supply, its wage- 
producers must exchange their wages for practic- 
ally the total volume of goods they have made and 
that volume of goods must surely be large enough 
to go all round ; for the wage-producers would nat- 
urally be employed at least to supply their own 
demand. Even if owing to a more bleak climate 
or a less productive soil, poorer mines, and scantier 
forests, a wage-producer was compelled to give up 
in making an article more strength than that given 



fJ7 

up doing the same ^\ oi k b\' another wage-producer 
in a better country, the former wage-producer, to 
prevent his country's prosperity from being made 
less, would still, by the sale of his product, have to 
get back the strength he had expended under his 
poorer circumstances. Because, suppose his coun- 
try, instead of taking his product at the price of his 
energy left it on his hands and imported a similar 
product at a lower price; or even suppose his coun- 
try dickered with him, and, because it could buy 
more cheaply abroad, compelled him to sell his 
product at a lower price than would return his 
outlay of strength, would this not reduce the pros- 
perity of your unfortunate wage-producer at least 
as much at it increased the prosperity of him who 
thus got a lower price? What would be true of 
one wage-producer would be true of any number; 
and therefore it would be true of the entire coun- 
try, and our declaration as to the country's pros- 
perity is true, that it cannot be increased through 
buying anything abroad. And inasmuch as the 
country must feed or starve its unemployed wage- 
producers, it will be easily seen, your Honors, that 
the rule upon which counsel for the wily plaintiffs 
laid so much stress, viz., buy in the cheapest and 
sell in the dearest market the world over, is a rule 
which would put money in the pockets of the wily 
plaintiffs by taking it from the pocket of the coun- 
try, and would therefore make the rich richer and 
the poor poorer. 

Changing the form of their statement, learned 
counsel say, "Exchange what you can make the 
cheapest for what other conntries can make the 
cheapest, so that you can live with the lightest 
labor;'' and by that saying they interest those 
whose brain-cells are few in number and simple in 



68 ' ' 

aiTangement. But the impression left by this 
plausible dictum is full of fallacies. It impresses 
him of the simple brain-cells that an exchange be- 
tween two nations is like an exchange between two 
individuals. For instance, Farmer A grows fine 
potatoes but poor pumpkins; while Farmer B 
grows fine pumpkins but poor potatoes; therefore, 
let these farmers exchange potatoes for pumpkins 
and both have large fine fruit. Even in a case 
like this Farmer A might get a chance to pinch 
Farmer B out of the profit; or Farmer B to do the 
same to Farmer A; and both farmers might better 
grow potatoes and pumpkins; but even if such a 
deal were profitable between individuals, it might 
be otherwise between nations. Nations are like 
large families who have to feed their children any 
way; and if one nation contracted to grow all 
pumpkins to exchange with another nation that 
grew all potatoes, it might find that half its work- 
ers could raise pumpkins enough for both nations; 
yet, under the contract, the other half of its work- 
ers could not raise such potatoes as they could ; and 
they would have to be supported in idleness. And 
what would be gained? That is what happens 
when a low tariff-dike snuffs out a great industry 
that aforetime was booming. Plaintiff's counsel 
say, "Set the idle workers at something else." That 
is against the contract; but suppose you tried it 
and the workers had been trained to a difficult 
trade now wiped out, might not the loss of time 
and strength in teaching them a new trade more 
than eat up your profit? Who arranges this high- 
daddy "international exchange" so it wont leak a 
drop? 



09 



VIII 



IN ORDER THAT THESE WILY PLAINTIFFS MAY FLOUR- 
ISH^ WAGE-PRODUCERS THE WORLD OVER MUST 
DIE. 



Your Honors, we trust you will further bear 
with US' and our brain-cells while we call your at- 
tention again to the fact that these wily plaintiffs 
flourish best where their operations are most cer- 
tainly fatal to the lives of wage-producers; that 
is, where the fall of their victims from high to 
loAV wages, from high to low living, is farthest. 
Your Honors, both of these wily plaintiffs are 
loaded at both ends for destruction. The Import- 
ing Trust flourishes here by causing our wage- 
producers to bid for their lives against the poor- 
est-paid labor in the world; while, being an Ex- 
porting Trust abroad, in order to find goods there 
to continue its work of death here, it causes wage- 
producers there to rush to narrower fields of em- 
ployment and so cut down their own wages. On 
the other hand, the Exporting Trust reverses the 
order of destruction. Here, if successful, it con- 
gests on specific employments our wage-producers 
who then tumble over each other for jobs in those 
employments, and plump down go their wages; 
and, abroad, our Exporting Trust;, being there 
an Importing Trust, makes wage-producers tem- 
porarily compete for employment against our su- 
perior machinery and methods here in specific 
lines ; and m the work of death of these wily plain- 
tiffs goes merrily on. Thus the entire business of 



TO 

these wily plaintifts its to make two competing 
groups of wage-producers see who can survive on 
the least food, wear the poorest clothes, and live 
in the poorest houses; thus cutting off the lives of 
the weak, and making weaker the lives of the strong 
Moreover they go forth to all climes' and coun- 
tries in search of the best chance to destroy wage- 
producers in this way, often starving to death 
wage-producers in some dear climate by forcing 
them to work for the same wages as wage-pro- 
ducers in a cheap climate. 

Yes*, your Honors, these wily plaintiffs search 
the earth over for places where goods are made at 
the lowest costs ; in order to search the earth again 
and find where similar goods cost the most to 
produce; and when such places are found they 
sell out of their jobs and their lives the workers 
who make goods at the higher cost. Verily, in order 
that these Avily plaintiffs may flourish, wage-pro- 
ducers the Avorld over must die. This foreign 
trade is the most destructive and heartless pur- 
suit in which human beings can engage; and yet 
the brain-cells of these wily plaintiffs seem well 
fitted for the job. 



IX 



THESE WILY PLAINTIFFS PREVENT THE DAWNING 
FOR THE WORIiD OF A BRIGHTER AND HAPPIER DAY. 

For wage-producers, life is indeed made hard 
and barren, your Honors, a losing game, so to 
speak, where these wily plaintiffs have free 
course. But on the other hand what an oppor- 



71 

tunity to live in the broadest and richest sense 
is afforded by a tariff -dike and dam which compel 
domestic demand to look alone to domestic supply ; 
and domestic supply to look alone to domestic de- 
mand. This makes an endless chain of prosperity. 
Every rising sun sees the country^s whole demand 
carried to the country's domestic market to ab- 
sorb the accumulated supply and leave there a 
vacuum into which may flow another greater sup- 
ply. For, your Honors, the secret of our pros- 
perity behind a high tariff -dike is* the fact that 
people's wants multiply with their satisfying. 
When there is any hope of their fulfillment, 
human ambitions for better things are never still. 
Wants multiply with the means of filling them. 
AVhen the wage-producer is steadily at work and 
wages are high, he not only provides his family 
with what he can pay cash for; but also pianos 
and music lessons for his girls, books, ponies and 
bicycles for his boys, and better and more clothing 
for his whole family, to say nothing of educa- 
tion in its various forms' for his young people, 
for which he may to some extent mortgage his 
expectation of the future; and when the tariff- 
dike and dam are high, he does not trust the fu- 
ture in vain; for his rising wages see him through 
his highest hopes. And so, your Honors, indus- 
tries multiply and expand to meet the multiply- 
ing wants of busy wage-producers; and the result 
is a boom of prosperity. 

Why, your Honors', it is all so easy to under- 
stand! A single man's wages act upon our mar- 
ket like hydraulic pressure, which multiplies the 
unit of pressure many fold; and a single oppor- 
tunity to exchange furnished the market by the 
wages of a single wage-producer clears a path for 



■i'J, 



a series of exchanges, each exchange doing as 
much good to others as the first did to the wage- 
producer to whom the tariff-dike gave a good job. 
And thus, your Honors, the growth of desires with 
the hope of satisfaction will keep on forever behind 
the dike and the dam ; and, with growth in the num- 
ber of those who assist in production and thus by 
their wages put hyrdaulic pressure on demand, 
will keep the demand for wage-producers greater 
than the supply; so that wages will keep on ris- 
ing, in spite of growing population and what 
would otherwise be greater competition between 
wage-producers; until wealth is scattered widely 
among us all so that property-producers, besides 
interest on their capital, will get only about the 
same wages for their trouble in the work of pro- 
duction as those received by the wage-producers 
in their shops. 

And here, your Honors, we observe a derisive 
smile on the faces of counsel for the wily plain- 
tiffs and anticipate their rejoinder. "What !'' they 
will say, "Build a Chinese Wall around the coun- 
try! On the one hand allow the whole people 
to be choked to death by the trusts,' who will 
'screw up' prices to the strangling point! And 
on the other hand, allow the labor unions to 's'crev^ 
up' wages until business comes to a standstill ! 
Allow the 'consumer' to be robbed and murdered 
outright by such brigands as these!" Our reply 
is that the tariff -dike does not keep out of this 
country capital on the one hand or labor on the 
other; and just as long as prices are higher than 
a fair profit requires, just so long will foreign 
capital come in to take its chance at the same 
blackberry bush which the "trusts" are stripping. 
And jnst so long as American wages will buy more 



73 

here behind the dike than foreign wages will buy 
in other countries, just so long will there be a 
stream of immigration, now over a million souls 
a year, bringing in workers from all over the world 
to share wages in this country. Inflowing capi- 
tal will keep down prices; and inflowing men and 
women will make wages reasonable. But capital 
comes by millions' through a single cable message; 
while the coming of labor drags' slowly through 
the years; so capital will compete with capital 
more strongly than labor with labor; and prices 
will fall while wages rise and, in the way we have 
said, wealth will reach a wider and wider distri- 
bution. 

And why is not our plan, your Honors, the best 
one to cause the dawning on the world of a bright- 
er and happier day? By it are we not now in- 
viting here all the peoples' of the earth? As we. 
have just said they are now coming at the rate 
of a million or more a year. They are coming to 
a land of employment under a system which con- 
stantly makes the poor richer and the rich divide 
more and more with the poor through the medium 
of wages. When these people come here, we have 
them under our flag, subject to our laws and our 
civilization. And what is more appropriate? Are 
we not all immigrants' together? Should we not 
share our system of wealth-distribution with them, 
esiiecially when they bring their willing hands 
and needy bodies to help us both in production 
and in consumption? If it is "foreign'' trade we 
want, is it not better to import the trade in the 
bodies' of these immigrants than in the form 'of 
s:oods to kill industry here? If we get foreign 
trade in this way, we can control it, sure enough. 
We can fence it in and have it all for ourselves 



u 

and not fight for it with all creation. What is 
the use of going abroad after foreign trade when, 
if we keep wages high here by a sky-high tariff- 
dike, foreign trade will come to us? In this way 
we are gradually annexing the world and fencing 
in its trade under such terms that nobody can 
kick. You remember what the old Quaker lady 
said, your Honors. We think it was something 
like this : "I do not see why the young men should 
put on their best clothes and go out to see the 
young women. Why, if the young men would 
only sit quietly at home, the young women would 
come to see them.'' And so it would be with 
foreign trade, if we would not go out to look it 
up, but sat quietly at home. And that is what 
it is doing in the persons of these immigrants. 
But that don't bring any grist to the mill of the 
wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust. It don't want 
us to annex the world in easy instalments' through 
immigration. And so it plots against the dike 
which brings in the world and says, "Down with the 
^trusts !' Down with the ^malefactors of great 
wealth,' that sell their goods dearer at home than 
they do abroad." Why, your Honors, if this plain- 
tiff would only stay quiet a spell and let the dike 
do its perfect work, there Avould very soon be no 
"abroad" left, for all "abroad" Avould have been 
annexed to u^. 



75 



THE WILY PLAINTIFFS BREED ANARCHISTS. 

This', your Honors, is the gravest charge which 
we have to bring against these wily plaintiffs. 
Although by dynamiting our dike they scatter 
throughout the length and breadth of our land 
misery like fire-brands in standing corn; although 
their effect upon the temporal happiness of our 
people is' baleful and nothing but baleful, it is 
their effect upon the immortal souls of our citi- 
zens which we most deeply deplore. For they not 
only vociferate their charges against the "trusts" 
and "predatory wealth," and thus divide the 
people into imaginary classes of "rich" and 
"poor," "labor" and "capital," "producer" and 
"consumer," whereas' in this whole country there 
is no rich class or poor class, laboring class or 
capital class, consuming class, or producing class; 
they not only destroy all boundaries between what 
specific laws outline as crime and what is crime 
only to the frenzied victims of these wily plain- 
tiffs, thus making each individual a judge, a jury, 
and a hangman for whomsoever his prejudices do 
not approve; they not only obliterate the land- 
marks of legal distinctions by thus discounting 
the distinctions established by ages of judicial de- 
termination; they not only substitute envy, mal- 
ice, and the guess-work of prejudice in the place 
of fixed law; they not only foment anarchy by 
arcnsinj]^ men of being robbers and criminals for 
acquiring, holding, and disposing of property, ex- 



76 

actly in the same manner as do all other citizens, 
with the difference only that those accused have 
more property, hold it more securely, and dispose 
of it more in accordance with their own interests 
than do others who are less independent; they 
not only destroy all respect for courts that do 
not depart from the letter and the spirit of the 
law and confiscate property held by "predatory 
wealth," "bad combinations,'' and "wealthy male- 
factors," when the only proof that the accused 
are "predatory," "bad," or "malefactors," is the 
fact that they have property which they have ac- 
quired, held, or sold, guided by exactly the same 
rules and laws which guide their accusers, and 
not that they have violated any written or un- 
written law hitherto known ; they not only breathe 
into our ill-arranged aggregations of brain-cells 
the spirit of Lynch law and naked confiscation; 
but they also at the same time are bringing about 
a condition wherein a premium will be placed up- 
on crime and a penalty upon honesty. For, your 
Honors, as we have said before, the instinct of 
self-preservation is but the instinct which leads 
us away from pain and towards pleasure; and we 
are at the mercy, not only of our various' groups 
of brain-cells which, when they get certain sen- 
sations, urge us to act in this way but we are 
also at the mercy of those brain-cells which ex- 
amine and approve or disapprove the means of 
switching on pleasure or switching off pain; 
which brain-cells also have the form which was 
given to them by heredity and previous environ- 
ment, neither of which was within our control. 
Now, your Honors, we all love pleasure and hate 
pain ; but we differ in the brain-cells which set- 
tle upon the means by which we take the pleasure 



77 

and leave the pain ; and we are very serious in the 
opinion, your Honors, that the majority of us 
would be so weak that, were we given the choice 
of dying from hunger on the one hand, or living 
from stealing on the other, our judicial brain-cells 
could not hinder our desiring brain-cells from 
stealing instead of dying. Now, in the manner 
we have noted before, the tariff-dike makes it more 
easy and much safer to work than steal. But, 
alas', your Honors, when the dike is down, it looks 
to many of us as if the one who steals has the 
best time; and more and more of us decide it is 
better to steal than to starve; and when we are 
forced to steal or starve, your Honors, we listen 
with far more patience than otherwise to these 
plaintiffs who divide our people into rich and poor, 
capitalists and laborers, producers and consumers, 
the governing and the governed, and set us all 
quarreling with each other, in order that these 
plaintiffs may pinch the clothing which we have 
laid aside for the scrap. It is these wily plain- 
tiffs, your Honors, who by dynamiting protection 
dikes and dams, cause all chronic lawlessness in 
this and other countries; they and their itching 
palms for our bank-savings; they and their life- 
business which is to feast from our famine. For 
when we feast, they are hungry, your Honors; 
then they holler "fire" and stampede us down 
stairs to the street and sit down in the seats' at 
the table still warm with our late occupancy. But, 
your Honors, the policy of this country should be 
to make men honest and orderly by making it 
easier to earn a living than to steal it. This' policy 
continued from now on would gradually make us 
the most moral and well-ordered community under 
the sun. All our brain-cells which urge towards 



78 

pleasure and away from pain, would be urging to- 
wards honest toil and away from the lives lived 
by pickpockets, burglars', highway robbers, and 
these wily plaintiffs. 

Therefore our public sentiment should say to 
every citizen: 

"If in quality and variety, the products of this 
country are not sufficient for your refined tastes, 
you would do well to emigrate to some place 
where you can get what you want. For, if you 
remain with us, you must spend with us all the 
money we pay you for working for us. One good 
turn deserves another, and our good turn in giv- 
ing you a good job and good wages in working for 
us deserves that you return our good turn by giv- 
ing US' a good job at good wages working for you. 
But if you return our good turn by taking the 
money we pay you and serving our good turn on 
aliens abroad, you will have robbed us of our 
deserts, weakened us morally, mentally and 
phvsically, and proved yourself an "undesirable 
citizen." For you will have taken from us some 
of our natural opportunities to exercise our stom- 
achs, our consciences, our intellects and our 
muscles, and have left us weak in these things 
where we need to be strong for the strenuous lives 
that are before us. If you and your like, operat- 
ing throufi^h the wily plaintiffs, the Importing 
Trust and Exporting Trust, are allowed to keep 
on stealing' these opportunities and selling them 
to people in foreign parts at a profit for yourself 
alone, there will soon not be enough of these 
opportunities to go around among us here at 
home, and some of us must die of starvation ; and 
a lot more of us will lie, cheat, steal and even kill 
to save our lives. And this would be going back 
to the woods and darkness of savagery, instead 
of forward to the sunnier heights of civilization. 
This is the mathematics of the case. Therefore, 
if vou remain with us, we shall not allow you to 
sell out our morality, our intelligence, and our 



precious human bodies to your pals' in foreign 
countries, and grow rich and proud members of 
the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, or can- 
nibal and fratricidal members of the Exporting 
Trust — also a wily plaintiff — on the reward, 
Avhether in silver or goods, of the betrayal of our 
nation to the spoilers." 



XI 



TO PROMOTE INTERNECINE STRIFE AMONG THE PEOPLE 
FOR THEIR OWN PRIVATE GAIN^ THE WILY PLAIN- 
TIFFS^ IN DWIDING THE PEOPLE OF THIS COUNTRY 
INTO ''governing'^ AND ''GOVERNED;^^ *^^RICH^^ 

AND ^^^^poor;'' ^^capital'^ and ^'labor;'^ and 

'^PRODUCERS'' AND '^CONSUMERS/' ATTEMPT AN 
IMPOSSIBLE CLASSIFICATION. 

r 

Your Honors, it must be apparent to you by this 
time that there is nothing accidental in the way 
the American people destroy their own prosper- 
ity for the profit of these wily plaintiffs. For 
there may be felt at all times a strong undercur- 
rent of public sentiment against our tariff -dike; 
and the cause of this undercurrent is not far to 
seek. It is the adroit hypnotism of these wily plain- 
tiffs, but principally of the Importing Trust. For 
example, the jealousy and envy of our people are 
excited by calling the servants of this Republic 
names which imply subjection on the part of the 
people and awaken the hatred which all free men 
have for tyranny. For instance, your Honors, the 
Importing Trust, through its newspaper following, 
speaks of the President as our "ruler'' and his rule 
as the "government at Washington;'^ and of peo- 



80 

pie as being '^presented'' to the President at the 
White House as if he were a king, and something 
more than merely our servant, and the "govern- 
ment'' something more than merely we, the people 
acting through our servant the President; and this 
is done, your Honors, to arouse in the minds of 
the thoughtless a sort of "class" feeling, as if the 
governing were one class and the governed another, 
with grievances' against an irresponsible despot, 
and with no way of getting free other than by 
revolution. Thus the Importing Trust foments 
antagonism between the people as the "govern- 
ment" and the people as the "governed;" and as 
the "government" builds the tariff-dike, the Im- 
porting Trust eggs on the "governed" until they 
overturn it; whereat, of course, the Importing 
Trust rejoices with exceeding great joy and 
pounces on the spoils of its victory, our domestic 
market. Now, your Honors, nothing could be more 
false than this idea which the Importing Trust 
suggests to our people. The president is the hum- 
ble servant of the rest of us; or would be "hum- 
ble," if he stopped to think how and for what pur- 
pose he was made president; and if he gets a 
swelled head as presidents sometimes do, why, 
your Honors, we have only to go quietly to the 
ballot-box and snow him under so deep that he 
cannot thaw out before late spring. The trouble 
with many of us is, however, your Honors, that 
our brain-cells which strike for violent measures 
are more powerful than those which are tempered 
by passing through the clearing house of reason; 
and the result is that, instead of managing our 
own affairs quietly and in our own interest, some 
sly fellow like the Importing Trust stands by and 
uses hypnotism to manage us in his own interest. 



81 

Again, your jlunors, sometimes through its 
newspapers' and sometimes through persons higher 
up, the Importing Trust, suggests that the people 
in this country are divided into the ^^poor" and 
the "rich,'' "predatory capitalists," "malefactors 
of great wealth," and the like. Again, your 
Honors, any one with but a few sound and sane 
brain-cells in the thinking area of his cerebrum, 
would know better than take such classifications 
as true ones. In this country there are no poor, 
as a class, and no rich, as a class. There are poor 
people and rich people; but w^here the poor leave 
off and the rich begin, no fellow can find out. 
What is poverty for one is wealth for another; 
what is wealth for one is poverty for another. It 
is all in the point of view. The man with a mil- 
lion dollars who does not want money but the 
love of some good woman which he can never have, 
is one of the poorest and most wretched of men. 
But the man with no more than his daily wages, 
no matter how small, so long as they are enougn 
to maintain, in verv reasonable comfort, him and 
the family he worships, is one of the richest men 
on earth. 

Again, your Honors, there are no "predatory 
capitalists" in the sense that they make up a class. 
People are not "predatory" in a sense deserving 
public denunciation, unless they have broken the 
law, no matter whether they are "capitalists" or 
not; and whether or not they have broken the law 
is a question for the established courts; and when 
these courts have determined that they have bro- 
ken the law, the same courts will punish them 
without any oratorical foam and fury, self-ad- 
vertisement and self-glorification, and still irre- 
spective of whether or not they are "capitalists." 



And until the courts have determined that people 
have broken laws, people are all innocent before 
the law. And any one who will brand a great body 
of people in a general way as "predatory capital- 
ists," and then leave it for the prejudices of each 
individual to make personal application as they 
please, convicts himself at least of having more 
brain-cells of force than brain-cells of fairness, 
and not knowing a "square deal'' when he sees it. 
In fact he is a good anarchist. For he is destroy- 
ing the standard by which to judge, your Honors. 
The law and its definitions of crime are ignored 
by people with brain-cells of this kind, who cast 
reproach broadside at an indefinite cloud of peo- 
ple. It is then a go-as-you-please competition be- 
tween those who wish to stick labels marked 
"predatory capitalist" on any one whom, not the 
courts, not the law, not orderly procedure; but 
whom the particular label-sticker desires so to 
mark. This, your Honors, is to discount law at 
a very low figure. "Predatory capitalist" is used 
in a condemnatory sense; and, as we have said, 
to apply such terms with any color of authority 
is to breed anarchy, to make every man the exe- 
cutioner of whomsoever disagrees with him in 
opinion or is superior to him in wealth. To apply 
such terms as this is to show very weak brain- 
cells where brain-cells should be strong. For to 
single out "capitalist" as a class to which to 
attach the term "predatory" is as narrow as to 
condemn a man without a hearing because he is 
Jew or Gentile, white or colored, and not because 
he has done wrong. All "predatory" people are 
punishable to the extent of the law, whether they 
are "capitalists" or not capitalists; but to refer 
to "predatory" capitalists is a dangerous thing; 



83 

since there are those ^\ilh such weak brain-cells 
that forever thereafter they will consider that 
"predatory" is particularly descriptive of "capi- 
talists" and therefore that a "capitalist" is nec- 
essarily "predatory," a sort of an outlaw, to shy 
at whom is doing God's service. Here is a bad 
jumble of brain-cells, your Honors. 

And it is the same, your Honors, with "male- 
factors of great wealth," and all similar expres- 
sions. The injury done to the judicial capacity 
of the thoughtless by thus selecting people of 
wealth alone to pillory as "malefactors," is very 
great. Yet the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, 
puts these expressions in the mouths of its news- 
paper organs' and its open and secret members 
everywhere, for the express purpose of making the 
people, in the end, destroy the tariff-dike and 
bring great wealth to the purse of the Import- 
ing Trust. 

Another expression, used with misleading and 
inflammatory intent, is "capital" and "labor." 
There is no such thing as "capital" in the class 
sense; nor is there in this country, any such thing 
as "labor" in that sense. As a matter of fact, 
every man who handles capital is a laborer, ofte 
a very strenuous and unresting one; while every 
man who labors is a capitalist. But where the 
laborer leaves off and the capitalist begins; or 
where the capitalist leaves off and the laborer be- 
gins, it is impossible to say. No man could use 
capital successfully without personal labor; and 
no laborer could offer the work of his hands with- 
out capital. The only classification possible among 
people who are thus all capitalists and all labor- 
ers at one and the same time is the one which we 
mentioned a little while ago, that 'of "wage-produ- 



84 

cers/' ^^property-producers/' and "adjunct-produ- 
cers;" which includes everybody in this country, 
except the juvenile, the senile, the sick, the tramps, 
and the "consumers,'' who live on their money and 
never earn any. There is really no way to class- 
ify people in the manner given out by the wily 
plaintiff, the Importing Trust, whose echo in this 
matter the Exporting Trust sometimes is. 

But perhaps, your Honors', in this busy land, 
where everyone worth while depends upon some 
form of property-production for his means of liv- 
ing, the most mischievous work of the Importing 
Trust, in this attempt to divide us all into hostile 
camps is that which it does by separating us 
all into "producers" and "consumers,'' as if each 
group were a tribe by itself, with its knives and 
tomahawks whetted for the throats and skulls of 
the other fellows. Nothing could be farther from 
the fact than that there are two classes of this 
kind; and we cannot understand in what way the 
wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, somewhat 
feebly backed in this regard by the wily plaintiff, 
the Exporting Trust, could have hoped to impress 
this classification upon our people; unless per- 
haps it was a harking back to conditions in Great 
Britain and the continent, where the feudal sys- 
tem was the mother of a distinct class of grandees 
who practically owned the bodies and souls of the 
workers within their zones of influence, the work^ 
ers' being regarded as the "producers" and the 
grandees and their families and favorites being 
regarded as "consumers." It must have been un- 
der such conditions, where labor was considered 
degrading by the upper classes', who practically 
owned and felt they had a right to the earnings 
of tlie "producers," that this idea of a separation 



85 

of workers into ^^producers" and "consumers" had 
its origin, the same classification being now made 
here by the Importing Trust to inflate the pride 
of would-be grandees in this country, who also 
feel as if labor is performed by a lower race than 
themselves. We may depend, your Honors, that 
it was during this feudal condition and the sepa- 
ration of people into workers or "oroducers" and 
rulers or "consumers-' that the old laws and rul- 
ings against "restraint of trade" were made, which 
had no other object than to flog the "producers," 
the practical slaves of the "consumers," into sur- 
rendering to the "consumers" or non-producers, 
Avithout regard to the cost to the workers or pro- 
ducers, the results of the latter's labor, at the 
price which the "consumers" might themselves 
consider fair. Thus, when the grandees on the 
one hand combined to force legal rulings against 
"combinations in restraint of trade," they out- 
lawed on the other combinations which were mere- 
ly offsets to their own combination, which latter 
was contrived to enforce destructive competition. 
We have certain people in this country, whose 
brain-cells in the equity division are small and 
feeble, and who make a great deal of capital by 
following in the footsteps of those old grandees 
and their oppression of the "proudcers." We ven- 
ture to say, your Honors, that every rule made 
against "combinations in restraint of trade" was 
made by some combination to compel the produ- 
cer, through destructive competition, to give up 
his property at a ruin price to the "consumer." 
The corrupt source of the laws against combina- 
tions in restraint of trade is proven by the fact 
that there was no law preventing any corporation 
in which the grandees or "consumers" had stock 



86 

interests, no matter liuw large and how compre- 
hensive in its hold on prime necessities of life, 
from acquiring as much or as little property as 
it pleased, sending it where it pleased, selling it 
as soon or as late as it pleased and at what price 
and under whatever conditions it pleased; and no 
law thus limiting property rights in corporations 
has ever been since made and all the talk of our 
Importing-Trust-owned demagogues against "bad 
corporations," in which they promise to prevent 
the "extortions'' of the trusts is idle clap-trap and 
must remain so until a constitutional amendment 
lodges in Congress absolute power to limit the 
property-rights of all citizens of the United States 
in any way it pleases; and then any political 
party which holds the presidency and both 
branches of Congress can strip the "other fellows" 
of as much of their property as they please, at 
any rate up to the limit where it would make Lu- 
cifer blush for the depravity of his brain-cells, had 
he been such a thief. 

Your Honors, it seems impossible to divide our 
active people into "producers" and "consumers;" 
for it seems to us, your Honors, that production 
and consumption are the same thing looked at 
from opposite standpoints; and that, therefore, 
"producer" and "consumer" are the same, being 
merely the reverse faces of the same coin. We 
might mount the high horse of prancing rhetoric 
and say: production and consumption are but 
eternally alternating phases in the endless pro- 
cession of changes in the phantasmagoria of mat- 
ter. Look, your Honors, is not production also 
consumption? In his production does not the 
property-producer consume the "finished pro- 
ducts" of other property-producers? And are not 



87 

these finished products also the '^raw material'* 
which some of our property producers, who, con- 
spiring with these wily plaintiffs, desire to get 
from abroad over a broken tariff -dike? Look- 
ing backward to your buying market, are you not 
consuming; and looking forward to your selling 
market, are you not producing? And is it not 
also the same with the wage-producer? Looking 
backward towards his food, clothing and shelter, 
which have given him the energy that he is now 
turning into wages, is he not consuming these 
things? And looking forward toward his wages, 
is he not producing wages? It seems so to us, 
your Honors, and that, therefore, producer and 
consumer, are the same. 



XII 

against the ^''pro- 
ducer/^ the wily plaintiff^ the importing 
trust^ treacherously lures the ^"^consu- 

MER^^ TO HIS OWN DESTRUCTION. 



In the active world, your Honors, every producer 
produces' because he must consume; and every 
consumer consumes because he must produce. 
This is a law of nature. Whatever the transient 
form of a given mass of matter, necessity is back 
of all voluntary changes* in its relations to another 
mass. It is changed in production and changed 
again in consumption, which itself is production. 
It is changed in producing a supply for him who 
clianges it, either for his own consumption or to 
exchange at the demand of another for the supply 



88 

offered bj that other. In either case, it is' changed 
for further change by consumption in effecting a 
further production. Therefore, since a man pro- 
duces a supply in order to effect a demand and 
consume another's supply, his demand is measured 
by his own supply to the market, so that his sup- 
ply is practically the same thing as his demand. 
If you desire the demand on a market always to 
be equal to its supply and business to be uniformly 
good, you must see to it that each supply takes 
effect as a demand. To meet a domestic supply 
with a demand already satisfied by a foreign sup- 
ply, is to tie the tongue of your domestic demand. 
It is to leave a domestic want unsupplied, and 
domestic misery where there should have been 
satisfaction. Therefore, your Honors, the happi- 
ness, yea, the very life of our community hangs upon 
the opportunity of its people to supply their own 
demands; and this depends upon whether or not 
the supply expressing A's want or demand meets 
at short and quick range B's want or demand, 
expressed in the terms of a supply which satisfies 
A's demand. 

This is the whole philosophy of communal pros- 
perity, morality, civilization, progress, refinement. 
By hitching supply and demand together so closely 
that they don't leak a drop and each exactly fills 
the other, all chance should be taken out of the 
question. 

Ah, we hear our learned brother at our left, 
counsel for the wily plaintiffs, say in a stage whis- 
per: "And w^hat a fix your producers would be 
in from overproduction, if they found no market 
but that made by their own bellies, backs, and 
beds!" No, your Honors, there would be no over- 
production, There would be production enough 



89 

to keep the whole community happy, with a safe 
margin for emergencies; and then there would be 
here and there a holiday, a few more picnics and 
periods of rest and rationality. There would be 
a happy communal life; but there would not be 
the piling up of great fortunes at the expense of 
the overworked. The confinement of home demand 
to home supply and contrariwise, would make such 
a division of wealth that wage-producers would be 
able to work fewer hours in a day and fewer days 
in a week and still save just as much for a rainy 
day. 

It is just as bad to allow your domestic supply 
to be wasted on foreign demand as it is to allow 
your domestic demand to be wasted on foreign 
supply. To do the first is to raise prices. To do 
the second is to depress wages. To do either is 
to separate producer and consumer, which pre- 
vents the wage-producer from receiving back in 
full the energy and life which he has put into his 
product. The condition of an even exchange in 
this regard is that a man as a producer should 
be separated from himself as a consumer by as 
small a gap as possible. In the primitive state, 
each man supplied his own wants and wanted only 
his own supply. But now-a-days we make directly 
a single sort of thing and by proxy all the other 
things we need. With most of us, wages are the 
only thing we produce directly, while we produce 
by proxy everything necessary for our use. We 
hire others to do our work. Others hire us to 
do their work. We producers are all agents for 
each other and each of us is entitled to just as 
many agents as he can pay for with his own work 
for them. But now along comes the Importing 
Trust, and by some one of its mouthpieces says, 



90 

"the price of bread is too high. The ^consumer* 
is being robbed. Give us a low tariff-dike on the 
side of wheat." Now one of these badly used 
"consumers" is a cobbler, for instance. He is 
mending shoes directly but raising wheat by proxy ; 
and the price the farmer pays for cobbling depends 
on the price he pays the farmer for wheat. So the 
"consumer/' the cobbler, is as much interested in 
a good price for wheat as is the farmer. Cut down 
the price of wheat and you cut down the price of 
cobbling. Now suppose the people of the commun- 
ity barkened to the Importing Trust and, helped 
the wily plaintiff break the tariff-dike for wheat. 
Why, all the cobblers would find that the low price 
of wheat had put the farmers out of the cobbling 
shop and they were doing their cobbling them- 
selves, or going barefoot. And the illumination 
of the cobblers would be but a specimen of that 
experienced by all the other "consumers" in town. 
No matter how high the prices which the "con- 
sumers" are paying, with a high tariff-dike, the 
community as a whole gets it all; and the "con- 
sumers" are the community. The higher the prices 
they pay as "consumers," the greater the wages 
they get as producers. But the dear old "consu- 
mer" always figures about so large in a dike "re- 
vision" campaign, which is always a campaign of 
confusion of fact by the wily plaintiff, the Im- 
porting Trust, who depends upon the ignorance 
ond fury of the people to help it steal our savings. 
After the battle the valiant "consumers" glory a 
while in their victory and then give themselves 
to hapov slnmlver; but only to awaken soon to the 
oohl and clnmmy fact that however warm and well 
filled they were last night as victorious "consu- 



91 

mers/^ as "producers'^ they are this morning very, 
very hungry and forlorn. 

Such an artless arrangement of brain-cells as 
these "consumers'^ have, your Honors! 



XIII 



BY ITS OWN RULE "BUY IN THE CHEAPEST^ SELL IN 
THE DEAREST MARKET/^ THE WILY PLAINTIFF, 
THE IMPORTING TRUST^ TACITLY SAYS^ WHEN IT 
OFFERS US ITS GOODS, THAT WE ARE ITS DEAREST 
market; and THUS^ tacitly gives THE LIE TO 
ITS OWN DECLARATION THAT^ IN DEALING WITH 
US, IT IS EXCHANGING GOODS FOR GOODS. 



We know, your Honors, that it is the business 
of the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust to im- 
port, and to say that neither the producer, whose 
products you buy nor the consumer, who buys your 
products, need be your next door neighbor at all; 
but he may just as well be in Portugal or Persia; 
that the course of trade will see that the thing you 
want to buy is handy, no matter where made ; and 
that the thing you want to sell has a customer 
somewhere on earth ; and that it is your privilege 
to exchange your product for the product of some 
one far away, if the distant product is cheaper 
than that of jour next door neighbor. But you 
don't exchange the direct product of your hands, 
a coffee-pot, a hairbrush, or a door-mat, which, as 
a wage-producer, you have already sold for wages 
to the property-producer. If you tried to exchange 
the very thing you make for the very thing the 
fellow in Portugal or Persia makes, the trade 



92 

would stop right there; because the foreigner 
would not exchange Avith you for the simple reason 
that, at half your price, he could buy in some 
market other than ours the same thing you offer. 
But for what you buy abroad you exchange gold 
coin instead of goods or what you produce; and 
that deceives you as to the true nature of the trade, 
which is a sort of unwritten treason on your part. 
Because, the reason you buy a thing abroad is that 
you can buy it at a lower price than at home, where 
the price must pay back to your neighbor the same 
sort of high wages which he pays for your labor. 
That is the only reason why you buy abroad; and 
when the Importing Trust wants to sell you any- 
thing, that fact alone is enough to warn you that 
in buying you are weakening a home industry. 
For the business of the wily plaintiff is to "buy 
in the cheapest market and sell in the deare? 
and its selling to you is a sign that you are it's 
dearest market for that article. In other words, 
that some other locality than your own country 
has been discovered by the Importing Trust where 
the article is made more cheaply than it is made 
here; which makes the purchasing of that article 
from the wily plaintiff by our people the same as 
the substitution of an industry in Portugal or 
Persia for one in tlie United States, and, over a 
whole industry, se])arates the producing side from 
the consuminii- side ; which simply means the death 
of that industry and the death of many and the 
degradation of all its wage-producers. It would 
be a ,e:ood plan for every American wage-producer, 
before helping the Iini)orting Trust "revise" the 
dike, to see how far lie could go in exchanging 
the very article he makes in the shop with some 



93 

article shown on the counters of the Importing 
Trust in this country. 

It would be easy to smoke out the wily plaintiff 
in this way and test its own belief in what it says 
about international trade being an even exchange 
of goods; and about the necessity of buying if you 
wish to sell. For if it wanted your goods so badly, 
it would charge 3^ou no commission at all, but 
would take your goods at your price, which 
would cover your high wages, the cost of the 
material and the property-producer's profit; and 
in exchange and to the extent of your price 
would give you goods which it had brought from 
abroad, charging no commissions to the producers 
abroad, and making the price of the foreign goods 
to you just enough to cover the wages paid abroad, 
the materials, and the usual profit to the foreign 
maker. If the wily plaintiff would take your goods 
on these terms, it would be a. sign it could sell them 
abroad; that there was a real demand there for 
the very kind of goods you made and that such de- 
mand was good enough to bear the commissions of 
the wily plaintiff in the price at which it ?«iold them. 

But on the other hand, if when joii went up to 
its counter, the wily plaintiff wanted you to pay in 
cash instead of in your own goods, it would prove 
that, for the same money, the wily plaintiff' could 
buy abroad more of your kind of goods than 3^ou 
are willing to sell. 

Since it is the Importing Trust which is "root- 
ing'^ for a tariff-dike "revision'' downwards, it 
must be doing so for its own profit and because it 
believes that such "revision" would increase its 
sales in our market; and since everybody knows 
that the Importing Trust takes nothing but gold 
for goods sold to our people, it is plain that its 



94 

goods are cheaper than ours and that if we traded 
with it, it would destroy American industries by 
buying our gold with its goods and thus separating 
those industries entirely from their "consumers." 

We think, your Honors, we have proven that, to 
a fatal degree, the Importing Trust is separating 
our consumers from our producing side; and that 
we have incidentally accounted for the hunger, soup 
houses, nakedness, crimes, diseases and untimely 
deaths which follow on the heels of tariff-dike "rev- 
ision'' and the good luck of this wily plaintiff in 
maddening our people against the "trusts," our 
client, American Production. 

We think an inspection of the cerebrum of the 
wily plaintiff, your Honor, TS'ould reveal a flourish- 
ing colony of brain-cells in the organ of Appetite, 
but a yellow, sickly, puny, scattering and expiring 
handful of the same in the organ of Compassion. 



XIV 

THE WILY PLAINTIFF, THE IMPORTING TRUST, WHEN 
IT URGES DIKE "REVISION^^ ON BEHALF OF AMER- 
ICAN MANUFACTURERS^ IN ORDER THAT THE 
LATTER MAY CHEAPEN THEIR PRODUCT AND SO 
CONQUER ^"^THE MARKETS OP THE WORLD/^ 
KNOWS THAT^ FOR ITS OWN PURPOSES, IT IS 
HOLDING OUT AN ILLUSORY HOPE. 

Your Honors, those acquainted with the history 
of the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, should 
be amused by its worry at the present time over 
the health of that branch of our client devoted to 
manufacturirifir. We could hardlv believe our ears 



05 

when caansel tor said wily plaiutiff, his voice mod- 
ulated to tones of touching tenderness, deplored the 
^'selfishness" and the "greed" and the "avarice" 
which led so many Americans to w^ant a high-tarili* 
dike, even though it made "raw materials" dear for 
our dear manufacturers, thus making their product 
dearer, and shutting them from the mighty profits 
which he said were awaiting said manufacturers 
"in the markets of the world," and which would be 
theirs when the dike was lowered and the boon of 
"free raw materials" conferred upon them. Why, 
your Honors, w^hat brain-storm has scattered the 
cells presiding over morality and equity in the cere- 
brum of this wily plaintiff! Lo, after years of 
calling our manufacturers "robber barons," fatten- 
ing from the blood of our "consumers;" and "pam- 
pered creatures" of "class legislation," which made 
ducks and drakes of the great Democratic princi- 
ple of "equal rights to all, special privileges to 
none," the wily plaintiff has ceased this terrible 
condemnation and on the contrary is filled Avith 
tremblings lest our manufacturers should make 
not too great but too small profits from our people ; 
and is imploringly pointing the way by which their 
depredations may be no longer confined to this 
country but luxuriated in also by all the grand 
peoples w^ho buy their manufactures in the "mar- 
kets of the world." No pent-up Utica should now 
contract the powders of those who formerly could 
do nothing but wrong, your Honors, the wily plain- 
tiff, the Importing Trust, being judge. By what 
evangel has the American manufacturer thus been 
converted from sinner to saint, your Honors! Ah, 
your Honors, we are beset with gloomy doubts. 
We have read iliesop, and we remember the story 
how Mr, Fox praised the voice of Mr, Crow until 



96 

the latter opened his moiiUi to show off his voice 
and let fall his dinner in the jaws of Mr. Fox; and 
we repeat, we are harrassed with doubts as to the 
kindheartedness of the Avilj^ j)laintift"s plaint for 
"free raw materials-' for the American manufact- 
urer. We are not sure but he is after Mr. Manu- 
facturer's dinner. We fear that the real reason 
why the wilj^ plaintitf wants American manufact- 
urers to go abroad in search of "the markets of 
the world" is because it thinks the room of those 
same manufacturers in our markets here at home 
is better than their company, what time the Avily 
plaintiff wishes to occupy the thoughts of the poor 
American "consumer." And we are confirmed in 
our fears for various reasons : 

First, your Honors, the Dingly Tariff lets in 
practically free of duty all "raAv materials" em- 
ployed in making goods for export. Therefore the 
dike does not need to be "revised" to assist our 
manufacturers to "free raw materials" if that is all 
that keeps them out of the "inarkets of the world." 

Second, in the cost of high-grade manufactures, 
raw material cuts very little figure. For one ex- 
ample, the "raw material" in a watch spring is 
worth almost too little for calculation ; but finished 
watch springs are very valuable; it is the wages in 
the watch spring that count. Wliat the wily plain- 
tiff should do, if it really wants its old enemy, the 
American manufacturer, to conquer the markets of 
the world, is to import "free raw labor" tliat will 
work for less than fifteen cents a day. . 

For another example, if hides are imported free at 
the cost of our farmer's home market for hides, shoes 
could not be made cheaper here by more than from 
2c to 4c per pair, which saving would not go into 
the pocket of the "consumer" but of the manufact- 



97 

urer, as it is too small to change the retail price; 
and it would "cut no ice" in cheapening shoes for 
the "capture of the markets of the world/' as hides 
or leather to be used in exports is already "free," 
as above noted. 

Third, we have absolute free trade now in raw 
silk, raw cotton, raw rubber, raw timber, raw hard 
coal, raw petroleum, and various "raw" other 
things and we export no more of the finished pro- 
ducts of these things than we Avould do if there 
were a tariff against them all when imported. 

Fourth, in order, by lowering the dike against 
"raw materials," to "capture the markets of the 
world," our manufacturers would still have to pay 
freights and insurance on their goods to the foreign 
markets; and at the ports of foreign countries pay 
high tariffs, which are levied by most of them to 
protect their domestic industries. Does the wily 
plaintiff mean to tell us, your Honors, that, after 
these other additions to cost, our tariff on "raw ma- 
terials" is the only thing which still keeps our man- 
ufacturers out of the "markets of the world." 

Fifth, very many American manufacturers, the 
number of whom is increasing daily, have built 
branch factories in the very foreign countries to 
which the wily plaintiff claims these same manu- 
facturers Avish to export goods and capture "the 
markets of the world;" and thus these manufactur- 
ers already have, free from American tariffs, all the 
"raw material" they need from Avhich to make 
goods to sell in the countries where their branch 
plants are, and at the same time they pay no 
freights and insurance on goods to those markets, 
as they would do if supplying them from their 
American plants. 

Sixth, it looks very much as if the wily plaintiff 



98 

had made common cause with American capital 
having branch plants abroad, to "revise" the tariff 
dike so far downward that both the wily plaintiff, 
the Importing Trust/ and American expatriated 
manufacturers could get goods into this country 
from the low foreign pay-rolls. 

Seventh, "raw materials" and "finished prod- 
ucts" are different names for precisely the same 
identical articles. It depends upon the point of 
view which expression is used. If the tariff-dike 
is to be "revised" downward to admit "raw ma- 
terials," it must simply be taken down for every- 
thing. If it needs to be put up to protect "finished 
products," it must be put up to protect everything. 
When the learned counsel for the wily plaintiff says 
we should "revise" the dike downward as to raw 
materials, he means either that we should take it 
all down so as to let all things in free, or take it 
down for certain things only; that is expose the 
goods of one American producer to free trade in 
order that some other American producer may add 
to the profit he already has from his protected mar- 
ket here any profit he may be able to get from "free 
raw materials" and sending some of his goods to 
"the markets of the world." Does this do credit 
to those brain-cells of the wily plaintiff which rule 
or are supposed to rule its sense of justice? 

Eighth, under no circumstances could our man- 
ufacturers ever capture the "markets of the world," 
in any such sense that, for any article now known 
to commerce they could monopolize the foreign 
market for any great length of time. And this for 
the simple reason that there is no article known 
to commerce which, with the same machinery and 
the same organization as those employed here, can- 
not be produced in the outside world for not to 



99 

exceed one-half of the ijweist possible ultimate cost 
in the United States. This is a fact too well known 
for discussion between those who know the actual 
cost of production in the outside world. Our arti- 
cles of greatest export are wheat and cotton; but 
this happens hj accident in the world's develop- 
ment. In Europe, Asia, Africa and South America 
are hundreds of millions of acres fully as well 
adapted to raising wheat and cotton as the best 
land we have; while in Mexico, next door and Cen- 
tral America, near at hand, are great tracts of 
cotton soil equal to our cotton belt; and these for- 
eign fields are at the moment almost wholly un- 
filled. The conquest of the earth by the mechani- 
cal, industrial and commercial age in which we now 
find ourselves began in such a way as to pick up 
our lands first and leave these broader and richer 
acres for later invasion. But the invasion is now 
at the door. For Mexico, Central America, South 
America, Africa and Asia are being assailed by 
the world^s unfixed capital in greater and greater 
volume; and billions of American capital are in- 
terested in this movement also, and for the express 
purpose, as we have said, of sending back to our 
home market here products made at the low costs 
possible from working virgin soils with the 
coolie labor of the world. And this expatriated 
American capital stands by the side of the wily 
plaintiff, the Importing Trust, and holds up its 
hands in its deadly assault, through its new^spapers 
and American political allies, upon the tariff-dike, 
which alone stands between the American wage- 
producer and the deluge. 

Your Honors, under this eighth head, let us note 
the fact that the countries which are each and all 
our competitors in this desperate battle to dom- 

LOffe 



100 

inate "the markets of the world' are themselves, 
for us, ^^the markets of the world.'' Also that in 
population, capital, skilled labor, soil, and all other 
things needful for production, they are at least six- 
teen times as large as we are. Also that at least 
one-third of their combined areas, containing the 
richest soils, the most valuable mines, the deepest 
forests, and the cheapest and most industrious labor 
in the world, lies within the tropics; and that at 
least two-thirds of the combined areas' of these coun- 
tries lies between the 30th parallels of north and 
south latitudes, in all of which cost of subsistence, 
which is the cost of production, averages not over 
one-fifth of the lowest average in the United States. 
And let us note farther one more fact, namely, that 
beginning with England, where Avages average one- 
half of those in the United States; and crossing 
over to Germany, where wages average but one- 
third of what they do here; to France where the 
average is nearly the same as in Germany; and to 
Italy, where the average wages are but one-fourth 
the American; and going eastward to the shore of 
the Pacific and to Japan, wages become lower and 
lower than they are in the United States. In 
Japan, the last country before we reach American 
territorj^ again, from 80 to 90 per cent, of the labor 
in its manifold factories shipping goods here are 
women and girls, the women being paid 11 to 12 
cents for a 11-hour day and the girls from 7 to 8 
cents for the same period; and the factories whicli 
employ these women buy their so-called "raw ma- 
terial" in the rest of the world, some of it from us, 
pay tlie freight from abroad to their factories, and 
back across over the tariff-dike to our shops and 
stores here in the United States, and then undersell 
here under our very noses anything that we make of 



101 

a like nature. These Jaijanese factories are water- 
ing our civilization now. What would they do if 
the tariff -dike were ^^revised?" Looking at the mat- 
ter from the standpoint of percentages and taking 
100 as the standard wage-payment when countries 
are compared, since we pay the highest Avages in 
the world, our wagescale would be denoted by 100. 
Now, it is not too extravagant to say that, taking 
the w^orld around, the average of the foreign pay- 
rolls is not over one-fifth of ours for the same 
labor. 

Therefore, if our wage-rate is denoted by 100, 
the average wage-rate in the world outside, being 
but twenty per cent, of ours, should be denoted by 
20. 

Now, your Honors, the cost of everything in this 
world from top to bottom is the cost of labor — 
somebody's labor. Therefore the price of an article 
contains in it the wages of every person w^ho has 
had anything to do with its production, followed 
from w^here the so-called raw-material was first 
contracted for, even from the surveying and pur- 
chase of the title of a mine, a farm, or a timber 
tract, all the way down to where the price 
which attracts our attention was realized. And 
wages are merely the cost of the wage-producer's 
subsistence. Where, therefore in view of the cost 
of it's keep as shown by wages, life is only 20% as 
expensive as ours, goods are eventually going to be 
but 20% as expensive as ours in the making. And 
a prudent estimate would discount any temporary 
advantage we may have in machinery or other 
things. Well, then, 20% of ours is the average 
cost of goods in the outside world as fixed by a pru- 
dent estimate. Now, your Honors, as a broad prop- 
osition, does it look reasonable that the world's 



102 

capital, considered as an aggregate and armed with 
an executive head, is going to be satisfied to furnish 
for the "markets of the world'' goods which cost it 
|1 to make here in the United States, when it can 
make the same supply in the outside world at a cost 
of 20c? For, in view of what the wily plaintiff, 
the Importing Trust says, that, in order to "capture 
the markets of the world," we merely need to "re- 
vise'' our tariff downwards and give our manufact- 
urers the benefit of "free raw materials," the broad 
proposition we have to consider is to make our |1 
beat the world's 20c cost. 

Now, if the index number of average cost in the 
United States stands at 100 and the average cost 
in the rest of the world at 20, supposing we let 
in free over our tariff-dike, not here and there an 
ingredient in the products of our manufacturers, 
but each and every ingredient entering therein; 
how far, after paying freights and insurance on 
their "raw materials" from abroad, would this help 
our manufacturers reduce their cost-100 so that 
the product ready to be shipped to "the markets 
of the world," would cost but, say, 19 instead of 
the present cost abroad of 20? Because in the dif- 
ference of 1 is embraced the profit of our manu- 
facturers, together with freights and insurance 
from here abroad, not to speak of the tariff 
which American goods must pay foreign govern- 
ments to enter the "markets' of the world." For it 
must be remembered that, if we are to capture "tlie 
markets of the world" through "free raw mater- 
ials," we must pay freights, insurance, cartages, 
and expressages on "free raw materials" both to 
and from our ports; whereas the foreigner who 
manufacturers at 20 already has among his sup- 
plies these raw materials which we buy of him and 



103 

he therefore has to pay no tariffs, freights, or insur- 
ance on them, 20 representing every expense of pro- 
ducing his article, including profit, to the point of 
sale in the mai'ket. We repeat, hoT\' far could "free 
raw materials" help our manufacturers to the 
"markets of the world'' under these circumstances? 

Another thing which we have not noted, and it 
is the most important item of all : If our manufact- 
urers had "free raw materials'' at a cost of 20, how 
would they also get at 20 the labor necessary to 
make up their materials into finished products? 

We must remember that labor here is at 100 
instead of 20 and that it is the most expensive in- 
gredient in the product. Ah, what does the learned 
counsel for the wily plaintiff remark? Does he say 
that letting in raw materials free would liberate 
so many of our wage-producers from other employ- 
ments that they also would be glad to work at 20? 
That is just what we thought and what we have 
been coming to, namely, that "free raw materials" 
are after all our own finished products, and their 
free importation cannot be of any use to our man- 
ufacturers in "capturing the markets of the world," 
unless we have "free raw labor'' also ; and that both 
what the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, and 
the wily plaintiff, the Exporting Trust, are really 
fighting for is, not to lot American goods out, but 
to let foreign goods in. 

For the purpose of i)rofiting ; either Avith or with- 
out a dike, the position of the wily plaintiff, the Ex- 
porting Trust, is unique. It does not like the tariff- 
dike; because that takes the profit from the goods 
made in its foreign plants at wage-20, by making 
it pay wages here equal to wage-100. But while the 
tariff-dike is high, the foreign- American, behind 
the dike, running his American plant, gets here at 



104 

least the American price for Avhatever goods he 
sells in competition Avith other American producers 
who have no foreign plants. Meanwhile, he works 
ail the time for "free raw materials," in order, if 
successful, to get Avhat advantage he may against 
his American competitors of less power as whole- 
sale purchasers of material. But he greatlj' pre- 
fers the dike to be so broken not that the materials 
of which his product is made may be admitted free, 
but the finished product itself from his foreign 
plant; and, if he succeeds in smashing the dike, he 
closes his American factories and runs his foreign 
branches on double time, and, by making at wage- 
20 and sending his goods in here, drowns out com- 
petition from American factories that have no for- 
eign branches. He then works our market here 
from the 100 price all the way down to the lowest 
limit in the falling market that always' follows a 
break in our wage-schedule. Thus the Exporting 
Trust clams the tide both out and in. 

Ninth. We have given eight reasons why we 
question the good faith of these wil}^ plaintiffs in 
their crusade against the tariff-dike to "capture the 
markets of the world;" but the ninth it seems to 
us should appeal to the hard common sense of your 
Honors as well as to your legal acumen; and it 
is this: We are here a country of 100. That infers 
to cost, price, wages, and business-volume. For, as 
to the business-volume, we have already said that 
the entire value of the country's products is tlie 
wage it pays itself for doing its own work; and 
"business'- is tlie mere act of making tliis payment 
through our merchants who hand out the goods. 
In other words the product-volume is the wage-vol- 
ume, and tlie Avage-volume is the business-volume. 
Now, Ave think we hjive proven that to disturb the 



105 

tariff-dike at all is to let in foreign goods at cost- 
20, hence wage-20 — as cost is all somebody's wages, 
— ^lience business-volume-20. Therefore, in the 
measure that ^^revision" of the dike increases for- 
eign competing imports, it reduces our business- 
volume from 100 toAvards 20. It follows, of course, 
that if the dike is so broken that there is no pro- 
tection left against foreign goods, our business- 
volume must land at 20, that is, at wage-20, in 
which costs of subsistence come in on the basis of 
sustenance-costs in tropical and semi-tropical 
areas; and these are so low that we shall die of 
starvation before we reach them. This great fact, 
viz., the reduction of the volume of our domestic 
business pari jmssii with the influx of foreign com- 
peting goods, explains all "over-production," "scar- 
city of money," "high price of gold," "dullness of 
trade,'' "depression in business circles," "industrial 
decline," "hard times," "panics," and poverty, 
which always follow any break in our tariff-dike. 
The wily plaintiffs know this as well as we and 
therefore know that for us to "capture the markets 
of the world," by "revising" the dike, is to wipe out 
our domestic business. 

Tenth. This reason for doubting the good faith 
of the wily plaintiffs is their knowledge of the con- 
ditions upon which capital remains at work in this 
countrj^ For, as we have said, we are a cost-100 
country; the world at large, against the whole of 
which we must buck to hold our own domestic mar- 
ket in loAV-dike times, is a cost-20 country. Now the 
only condition upon which capital will work any- 
where is that of making a profit at least equal to 
that made by capital in similar lines elsewhere. A 
patriotic, nation-building policy Avould make the 
tariff-dike so high that it would make higher than 



106 

the domestic cost the cost of landing in our market 
the goods of the cheapest countiy in the world. In 
other words, no foreign goods would be admitted at 
so low a tariff considering their cost, as to stand on 
equal terms with domestic goods. Citizens of this 
country, living quietly under its laws, supporting 
its government, submitting to taxation for the 
maintenance of its institutions, and ready to spring 
to its armed defense in case of need, ought, in all 
equity, to be preferred in our markets over aliens 
abroad who do nothing at all for the country's good. 
But the only condition upon which capital will re- 
main at work here is that a tariff-dike raises the 
foreign cost to that of the domestic. Otherwise 
active capital here has the alternative of either mi- 
grating to lower-cost areas or being dissipated into 
the hands and added to the capital of its competi- 
tors abroad. For it is plain that, with a "revenue- 
tariff" dike only, the capital invested by our prop- 
erty-producers in making goods would not be re- 
turned to their keeping in their price. If their 
goods sold at all against lower-cost goods, from 
their cost-lOO goods they would get back but a por- 
tion of their cost, the balance remaining with the 
American purchaser. If American purchasers con- 
tinued to give them preference at the same price as 
the goods offered by the Importing Trust, it would 
all end by our property-producers losing all their 
capital to their customers and stopping business; 
which would leave the field entirely to the Import- 
ing Trust ; and thereupon the money from our prop- 
erty-producers' capital, scattered into the hands of 
the American purchasers, would now be spent by 
the latter with the Importing Trust, which, after 
deducting its commissions, would send it to the 
f()i'(Mgn producer, wlio woulrl use it in making more 



107 

goods wherewith to destroy any of our industries 
still left standing.* 

In this way, with the tariff^dike "revised'' and 
made lower than would equalize the lowest foreign 
cost to cost-100, our capital would go to foreign 
producers. But our capitalists would not wait for 
that. They would either discharge their wage- 
producers, close their factories, save as much as 
possible of their cash and credit and wait for the 
next presidential camiDaign to restore the dike; or, 
which is more likely, they would go abroad with 
their capital, best skilled labor, machinery and 
methods. And the great majority- of our own wage- 
producers and the aforetime property-producers of 
the smaller sizes, would be turned out to live di- 
rectly from the soil like the rabbits and woodchucks 
and other such "small deer.'' This would cost us 
our civilization and millions of our workers' lives, 
cut off b}^ breaking connection between food and 
stomachs. 

From the foregoing ten reasons, all well known 
to the wily plaintiffs, we think we have proven that 



* A low.tariff dike does not wait for the exhaustion of our 
capital before closing our factories. It has been the custom of 
the Importing Trust, at every prospective lowering of the dike 
below the protective limit, to leave with our wholesale mer- 
chants a written guarantee to furnish any goods in its line at 
something like 10 per cent, less than the lowest offering of 
American makers no matter what. This method has secured 
the American demand for the supply of the Importing Trust 
from the very start and caused the almost immediate closing of 
all American factories thus exposed to the competition of the 
Importing Trust. This practice accounts for the fact that It 
was no sooner known, in November, 1892, that Mr. Cleveland, a 
free trader, and a Congress, free trade in both branches, would 
control tariff legislation thereafter, than the country was 
seized with a violent panic and factories were closed on all 
hands and working forces of those still open heavily reduced. 
Even as earlv as that, it is safe to say, the Importing Trust had 
its underbidding schedules in the hands of American whole- 
salers, which was sufficient to discount the impending free- 
trade legislation and make the actual business condition of the 
country the same as if such legislation had already taken place. 



108 

these wily plaintiffs' know that they are putting 
forth a poisoned bait when they invite our property- 
and- wage-producers into their trap of "the world's 
markets." 

And your Honors, we think you will bear with us 
when we say that, using the term in the same 
sense in which the wily plaintiff, the Importing 
Trust, uses it against all our great industries, the 
wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, and the wily 
plaintiff, the Exporting Trust, making common 
cause, form the wickedest trust in the world; and 
we verily believe that an inspection of the brain- 
cells of this wickedest trust in the world would re- 
veal the same nature as that shown by the brain- 
cells of the late lamented King of the Cannibal 
Islands. 



XV 



IN KEEPING A NEWSPAPER CLAQUE CONSTANTLY EM- 
PLOYED IN CULTIVATING A PUBLIC OPINION 
AGAINST THE TARIFF-DIKE^ THE WILY PLAINTIFF, 
THE IMPORTING TRUST, IS WORKING FOR ITS OW^N 
POCKET ALL THE TIME. 

Your Honors, in and out of season, especially in 
the great importing cities, where the wily plaintiff, 
the Importing Trust, is almost supreme in power, 
you read in the newspapers, slurs of all sorts 
against the policy which builds tariff-dikes, from 
those which damn by faint praise, which often ap- 
pear in newspapers pretending to be protectionist, 
to those which denounce the tariff-dike as the work 
of "robber-barons,'' purchasing Congress through 



109 

compaign contributions. We should study this hos- 
tility to the tariff-dike, and the purpose to destroy 
it, which in the breast of the Importing Trust never 
slumbers or sleeps. The following appeared not 
long ago in a newspaper published in our greatest 
importing city, a neAvspaper which for a century 
has been a tool of the Importing Trust to under- 
mine American Production : 



"The hide of the stand-patter is extremely tough and 
its sense of humor is slight, judging from the reply of 
the Kennebec Journal to this sarcasm of the Waterville 
(Me.) Sentinel: 'The idea that the Dingley tariff is re- 
sponsible for all business advancement robs the Almighty 
of the credit of all of the natural blessings which He has 
bestowed upon us, and robs mankind • of the credit of 
having accomplished anything for itself by industry, fru- 
gality, and enterprise.' The reply is: The people of 
Maine know that they are enjoying to-day, under the 
Dingley tariff law, the greatest period of prosperity in 
their history." 



This is an attempt, your Honors, to belittle t^e 
work of the tariff-dike, by accusing the Almighty 
of favoritism to our country in giving it "natural 
blessings," the like of which He has given to no 
others of His children. It does not need to be 
pointed out that this is little short of an impeach- 
ment of the Most High on the ground of injustice to 
the rest of the world. Of course, the purpose of 
the article is on the surface. It is merely to make 
light of the effect of the Dingley dike upon our 
prosperity. Every one acquainted with our indus- 
trial, commercial, and financial history knows that 
whenever the Importing Trust has succeeded in 
blinding and maddening our people so that they 
haA'e broken or "revised" the dike, our "natural 
blessino's" are worthless as against the artificial or 
other blessings of the countries whose payrolls are 
less than half as high as ours. As to our "Indus-. 



110 

try, frugality, and enterprise,'^ they are about as 
effective in stemming the tide of foreign surplus 
products which rolls over our broken dike, as the 
efforts of a blind puppy in stemming Niagara 
Falls. 

Here is another sample of a dike-breaker: 



**A tariff must be changed to meet conditions, and only 
the most myopic 'stand-patter' will contend that our 
trade and industrial relations in 1907 hear any close re- 
semhlance to our trade and industrial relations ten years 
ago. The Dingley rates are in many cases out of touch 
with present national needs, and both for purposes of 
revenue and for purposes of rational protection could he 
altered to advantage. The great maiority of the voters 
in the country are now convinced that protection has 
heen a wise and helnful policy. They want to continue 
to annly the principle, hut they want to see it applied 
intelligently, fairly, and for the greatest good of the 
greatest number." 



Your Honors, when the Importing Trust wants 
to do a very dirty thing to our client, American 
Pri>duction, it piously app-eals, through some pro- 
tectionist newspaper, to the interest alleged to be 
the "greatest good of the greatest number." We are 
sorelv afraid, your Honors, that the brain-cells of 
us all still have some likeness to those we had when 
we all belonged more or less to the genus Viator- 
liomo, an animal which, sometimes all by his lone- 
some, sometimes in pairs, and sometimes in great 
numbers, but all on one and the same "job," in 
olden times infested our highways. When these 
worthies saw an innocent but rich wayfarer making 
tracks in their direction, they hastily took a vote on 
the subject which invariably decided that "the 
greatest good of the greatest number," of their 
crowd, d(Mnanded that they should pounce on the 
innocent but rich wayfarer, who was himself mere- 
Iv "n malefactor of great wealth," and divide 



Ill 

equally between themselves his clothing and other 
goods. 

This is the sort of a vote which before announc- 
ing that the greatest good of the gi^eatest number 
— of importers — demands a "revision" of the Ding- 
ley dike the members of the Importing Trust are 
taking among themselves noAV. The item last men- 
tioned ends as follows : 



"But whether 'revision' is to come a year sooner or a 
year later, the fact is clear that the country is beginning 
to think the time is near at hand for overhauling the 
tariff of 1897." 



"The country," your Honors, means the Import- 
ing Trust. When it is manufacturing public opin- 
ion it bows to itself in this way through newspapers 
such as the one last quoted. The taking way in 
which the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, uses 
this word "country" is the secret of its fooling so 
many people all the time. 

Here is another specimen of the public-opinion 
makers circulated through its newspapers by the 
wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust : 



"This newspaper does not think there is any excuse for 
the United States longer shutting its eyes against the 
fact that the whole world is engaged in tariff adjust- 
ments, and that an ossified tariff involves the menace of 
an ossified commerce. ' ' 



This paper was rooting for "revision" when it 
published this; and "revision" never means any- 
thing but "reduction;" and is never used by any- 
body but people who are opposed to our tariff'-dike. 
But in order to catch more crabs in its net, the 
wily plaintiff baits the net merely with "revision/' 
That, it thinks, will fool the mollusks. When it 
says "the whole world is engaged in tariff adjust- 



112 

inents/^ it wants jou to think, your Honors, that 
the whole world is reducing its tariffs; whereas the 
w^hole w^orld is raising its tariffs against foreign 
goods, not by way of retaliation, but because it is 
getting the fashion for nations to do their own work 
and pay themselves therefor. When in this article, 
it refers to the ^^menace of an ossified commerce," 
it wants you to think that "commerce," meaning 
foreign commerce, is that by which we live; and 
that if we don't watch out and give the Importing 
Trust a show w^e shall find ourselves steering up 
Salt Eiver. Whereas, the fact is that foreign com- 
merce is our very national bane; the source ©f all 
our panics and hard times, of treachery to our na- 
tional interests from within and without, the cause 
of the Kevolution, the War of 1812, our Great Civil 
War, the Cuban Treaty, the rooting for Philip- 
pine free trade, the late German Agreemeent, and 
all the other mischiefs of which our nation has ever 
been the victim, including the periodical obsession 
of our industries by these wily plaintiffs, and the 
turning back of the Clock of American Progress 
ten years at a time. That is what foreign commerce 
does for us. 

Here is a sample of dike-busting, which like all 
the rest of the same kidney is specially constructed 
to conceal the voice of the wily plaintiff, the Im- 
porting Trust, Avhich speaks through it : 

"A proposal for a revival of Democratic tariff reform 
is at least in the line of common sense. When stiff- 
necked old Assyrian hunkers like Joe Cannon come to 
admit the tariff is susceptible of improvement and is not 
a flawless and inspired whole, there must be clear proof 
of a popular desire for tariff revision. At any rate the 
Western Farmers have discovered that a high protective 
tariff is not a heaven-born means of getting rich without 
injuring anybody but the accursed foreigners." 

The thing particular to note about this last ex- 



113 

ample of tariff-busting editorial comment, plainly 
showing as it does the dictation of the wily plain- 
tiff, the Importing Trust, is its bell-wether char- 
acter. You know, your Honors, w^hen you want a 
lot of thoughtless folks to join you in some damn- 
foolishness, it is very important to make them think 
they will only be doing what a whole crowd of other 
people are doing or have already done; therefore, 
you will observe that the editor first flatters his 
readers that they will only be in the line of "com- 
mon sense' ' if they assist in "a revival of Democratic 
tariff reform;'^ for "common sense" is supposed to 
be a sense that is common. This establishes the 
feeling of community and large numbers. Then 
see how quickly this allusion to "common sense'' is 
followed by the assurance that any fellow who goes 
in for "tariff revision" will only be joining in a 
"popular desire ;" and the editor has no sooner rung 
you in among the great throng of the popularly- 
desiring than he makes you a member of the great 
guild of "Western Farmers," who have discovered 
what a heinous thing is the protective tariff; and 
at the same time the editor causes your heart to 
swell large with pity for the poor foreigners whom 
you have so unjustly cussed out aforetime. This 
last is a real artistic touch, your Honors. It is very 
seldom that a hireling of the wily plaintiff, the 
Importing Trust, can kill so many dollars with the 
same pen-full of ink. For we suppose, your Hon- 
ors, that these scribblers against American Pro- 
duction, our worthy client, are paid in proportion 
to the number of blows in the same paragraph they 
can give to the tariff-dike. Note, your Honors, the 
majestic climax elaborated by this gifted stabber of 
American Production: He first modestly brings in 
"tariff reform;" then with a bolder note broaches 



"tariff revision;'^ and fetches up the rear with a 
roar in your ear against the ^'protective tariff." 
Very artistic, your Honors, and very effective; a 
first-class example of the virus of hatred for Amer- 
ican Production injected systematically iu the 
veins of public opinion by the wily plaintiff, the 
Importing Trust. And so adroit, too ! VVhy, bless 
your hearts, your Honors, the newspaper that con- 
tained this editorial counts as a Eepublican pro- 
tectionist newspaper! And when "protectionists" 
themselves damn the dike isn't that enough? 

Now listen to what comes next, your Honors. It 
is a rich bit from an Importing Trust mouthpiece 
of over a hundred years standing. The occasion is 
the discovery by our State Department of what this 
newspaper calls "A Useful CudgeF' with which to 
"get back at" nations that do as Germany has been 
doing: Double their tariffs in order to halve them 
again as a concession to national fools like our- 
selves who "lie down," as we did in the German 
Agreement. Kindly listen : 

"Originally bestowed [the 'cudgel'] to enable the 
President to retaliate for German discrimination against 
our meats, this power was speedily forgotten when that 
dispute was adjusted. It is now to be used against other 
nations, as the President shall determine. We see once 
more how tariffs are the most perfect means of producing 
concord and friendly feeling between nations and what 
measures of good- will grow out of them." 

This is a gem, your Honors, if you consider its 
object; which, of course, is neither more nor less 
than to assist the wily plaintiff, the Importing 
Trust, to another inning as the monopolist of our 
domestic market. It breathes the "lie-down'' pol- 
icy, so well illustrated in the German agreement 
before mentioned. It assumes that the tariff-dike 
is only a matter of caprice or an incident of politi- 
cal vicissitudes such as this poor land is the victim 



115 

of. It reeks* with the sentiment that the way for a 
nation to get along is to open its markets to all 
other nations. And there is not an argument in it. 
It aims at a very low mark, namely, that part of 
the public devouring newspapers which nourish no 
brain-cells of the higher tiers. It is of the sugges- 
tive order, a sort of hypnotic pabulum for those 
born too tired to think for themselves. Don^t argue 
the case at all. Just keep telling the country it is 
a fool to maintain a tariff-dike; keep suggesting 
that "concord and friendly feeling between na- 
tions'' is really all our stomachs need; that tariff- 
dike bread and butter is a delusion and a snare! 
And by and by enough heads will have been filled 
with these hypnotic fumes to promise success for 
another Importing Trust Campaign against the 
tariff-dike. 

Your Honors, there is another method of attack- 
ing the tariff-dike, very dear to the wily plaintiff, 
the Importing Trust; and it is even more danger- 
ous than that illustrated by the editorial extracts 
which we have just read. For it does not even men- 
tion the tariff-dike. This method is that of ethere- 
alizing the sources of our prosperity. Our prosper- 
ity "comes out of everywhere into here." It could 
not come from a hard-headed and intelligent policy 
such as that which, by an import tariff-dike and an 
export-tariff dam, would confine the whole Ameri- 
can demand to the American supply and the Ameri- 
can supply to the American demand. Oh, no; to 
account for prosperity and adversity, the wily 
plaintiff, the Importing Trust, tells ghost-stories 
through its newspapers. Here is one of them : 



**The fact we know to he that men and women fall 
in love by instinct or inexplicable passion; and that their 
later explanations of the precise reason are rather laugh- 



IIG 

able afterthoughts. May it not be the same with the 
emotions about finance and the state of trade? 

"That feeling has a great deal to do with prosperity, 
and its lapsing, is an old story. Sentiment is not quoted 
on the exchanges, but it has much to do with fixing 
prices. A comfortable sense gets into the hearts of people 
that they are increased in goods and have need of noth- 
ing; and then they are prosperous, partly because they 
think they are. But when the reverse feeling sets in, 
they sometimes cease to be prosperous, partly because 
they think they are so no longer. And this is, at present, 
perhaps the most critical element in the commercial situa- 
tion. People begin to feel it in their bones that we are 
in for a period oi trade depression. They begin to talk to 
each other about it; repeat in private conversations their 
belief that we have passed the crest of prosperity; and 
little by little create a sentiment, an expectation, which 
may be unfounded in strict reason, but which nevertheless 
must be reckoned with and is certain to have a powerful 
influence." 

This is an editorial from the regular staff of the 
Importing Trust. Nevertheless its writer is a poet. 
He reduces to a Christian Science basis the whole 
matter of the prosperity or adversity of a country. 
There is no such thing as sin, sickness, and death. 
^^Feel'^ you are prosperous and prosperous you will 
be. "Feel" the contrary, and your financial name 
is Dennis. It is all in mind; no matter anywhere 
in it. A man does not "feel" prosperous because 
he knows that he will get a little more than a dol- 
lar back for every dollar he invests in staple pro- 
duction in this country. He does not "feel" unpros- 
perous, because he discovers that a leak in the dike 
has knocked his domestic market endwise, and that 
if he lays out a dollar in making goods here he is 
certain to get back but 75c in his price. Commer- 
cial facts are nowhere; "comfortable sense" which 
clambers into his heart makes prosperity; and a 
"reverse feeling" makes adversity. Somewhere 
away off in the sweet empyrean sits a beneficent 
angel giving him absent treatment; and, lo, he is 
liappy and prosperous. But, presto ! the beneficent 
angel is out of business, and somewhere else, away 



117 

o& in the smoking, smoldering pit of woe's inferno 
sits malicious animal magnetism, treating him ab- 
senth', and the milk of prosperity goes sour. 
Brains and their judicious use no longer affect' 
human affairs. Oh, bother them all! Pack them 
in your grip and send them back b}^ American Ex- 
press to Eden ! They are out of date frippery from 
antedeluvian times! No such things as a tariff- 
dike, keeping out the foreign surplus deluge from 
your industrial gardens, could possibly have any- 
thing to do with your prosperity. Just take a good 
dose of "feeling'^ and your prosperity will glow 
from within you out of you like a sun. 

Your Honors, with great good reason have we 
dubbed the Importing Trust the "wily plaintiff." 
Such newspaper- work as w^e have just described is 
meant for two things, viz., on the one hand, to 
ignore the dike entirely, if the object is a general 
impressing of the idea that it has nothing to do 
with our prosperity; and, on the other hand, when 
the wdly plaintiff has once more destroyed the dike 
with a keg of anti-"trust'' dynamite, to cover the 
tell-tale footprints of the Importing Trust up to 
and away from its job. 

There is no doubt, your Honors, that the pres- 
ent administration is a mere auxiliary of the 
Importing Trust. The Cuban Treaty, the dis- 
charge of Appraiser Wakeman, the German 
Agreementj and the measures' to promote smug- 
gling generally, the strenuous effort to give 
tlie Importing Trust free access to our markets 
I through a Philippine Hole in the Wall, to say noth- 
ing of this Taft crusade in favor of tariff "revi- 
sion,'' more than prove this. All these assaults 
have badly shattered the dike; and the deluge of 
/foreign goods upon our markets is making itself 



118 

more and more felt; and it is much to the interest 
of the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, to con- 
ceal the true cause of the hard times that are sure 
to follow. The editorial just read helps do that; 
and the same is true of the following : 



**But now, what of tlie future? Industry as yet lias 
shown only scant signs here and there of declining ac- 
tivity. The crop outlook is not altogether satisfactory, 
hut considering the advanced prices and the great stores 
left over from other harvests, there is nothing in that 
situation to bring real disaster. The mercantile situation 
seems healthy" — 



Yes, your Honors, healthy for the Importing 
Trust, whose interests are the limiting horizon of 
this speaker's vision. The situation should seem 
^'healthy'' for the Importing Trust, when imported 
goods are storming across our dike at the rate of a 
billion and a half a year. There is a good chance 
in that for healthy commissions for the wily plain- 
tiff. It has no cause to complain. But let us con- 
tinue the reading from this mystifier of that about 
which there is no mystery. He continues: 

"Labor is still fully employed at the highest rate of 
wages ever paid. The banking position is sound. But in 
spite of all this, in spite of a half-year's record just clos- 
ing, which in most lines of business will be the equal of 
last year's phenomenal figures, nearly all experienced 
business men are of the opinion that we are facing a 
practically certain recession in trade, that we have ahead 
of us a period of smaller industrial totals." 

Why, ^^a recession in trade/' your Honors? Has 
our death-roll so outstripped our birth-roll of late? 
Your Honors, the only possible direction from 
which at this time can come any "recession in 
trade" is from a leaking tariff-dike, lessening our 
home demand by letting in a deluge of foreign 
goods, putting out our factoiy fires and turning our 
millions of wage-producers out of doors. For with 



119 

us, the maker of trade is the American people, 
wages' in hand, drawing upon the supply of goods 
which flows from American Production. So when 
by imports you stop American Production, you stop 
to the same degree, American consumption, and so, 
American business. Is not our orator preparing us 
for a stoppage of American Production? Does that 
mean anything else than that the tariff-dike is too 
low and that the tariff-juggling and smuggling of 
our Importing-Trust administration is supplant- 
ing American by foreign production? That ih jus;t 
what "a recession in trade'' will prove, your Hon- 
ors; and our orator is preparing us with his mysti- 
cism to expect "a recession in trade" as a matter 
of course, so we will not ^^get onto the game" of the 
Importing Trust and the leaking of our tariff-dike. 
But let us continue our orator's profound remarks : 



"Such a view is almost universal among well-informed 
business men. There is no longer a disposition courage- 
ously to enter upon new enterprises. Railways are cur- 
tailing expenditures. Bankers are inclined to exercise 
caution in extending accommodations. Most manufac- 
turers and merchants are planning their fall campaign 
with much conservatism. 

"That the period ahead of us is one in which com- 
mercial activities will be curtailed and manufacturers 
totals show a decrease, there is really little division o^ 
well-informed opinion." 



There jou have it again, your Honors, manufact- 
urers' totals are to show a decrease ; that is, Ameri- 
can manufacturers^ totals. Foreign manufactur- 
ers' totals will shoAv an increase; but that is not 
"in the game." It is that fact which must be con- 
cealed. And so the wily plaintiff, the Importing 
Trust, trains its literary guns on our mental fort- 
resses in any way that will shatter the tariff-dike 
most, and at the same time make a smoke that will 
conceal its own hand on the lanyard. 



120 



XVI 

THE SYSTEMATIC IGNORING OF THE TARIFF-DIKE AS A 
SOURCE OF AMERICAN PROSPERITY PROCEEDS 
FROM BUT ONE SOURCE AND HAS BUT ONE OBJECT. 

Your Honors, we cannot repeat too often our 
warning to you against the subtleties by which the 
wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, carries on its' 
great propaganda of public opinion against our 
client, American Production, and in favor of its 
own monopoly of our domestic market. We have 
given you a number of examples of its methods of 
bringing into contempt the great tariff -dike behind 
which and because of which our client lives and 
moves and has its being. 

A distinct method by which the wily plaintiff, 
the Importing Trust, thrusts its pick and its crow- 
bar deep beneath the foundations of this defense to 
our national being is that by which its newspapers, 
authors, and orators, when seeking to account for 
our prosperity on the one hand and our adversity 
on the other, ignore the condition of the tariff-dike. 
You have not the time and we have not the breath 
to go into our budget of proofs of this method of 
assault employed by the wily plaintiff just named, 
proofs which we have gathered from a thousand 
sources; and we shall spare you and content our- 
selves by the analysis of a single remarkable case 
wherein the wily plaintiff, the Tmpoi*ting Trust, by 
the mouth of one of its most devoted servants', seeks 
to hide the only source whence prosperity beams 
upon our land and warms to quick action the great 
powers of this nation. To quote from an oration 



121 

delivered not so long ago by an orator well known 
as an advocate of the wily plaintiff, the Importing 
Trust : 

"Men need training to become skillful. They must 
have variety of work if their outlook and technical skill 
are to have breadth. They must know something of prin- 
ciples, if they are to have original ideas of value. I be- 
lieve that we have failed utterly to grasp the problem of 
the relation between education and our industrial de- 
velopment and prosperity." 

Please note, your Honors', that this speaker as- 
sumes that the only source of our national pros- 
perity is foreign trade ; for only on that assumption 
has this statement any force. The speaker ignores 
the fact that our domestic trade absorbs nearly 
98% of our average total annual production. He, 
therefore, ignores our tariff-dike entirely as the 
source of prosperity; nay, as the source of our 
chance to live at all. You will observe that his 
key-note is education^, which he assumes to be the 
one thing needful to help our artisans' "capture the 
markets of the world.'' 

But back to our orator : 

** Within the memory of most Americans there has 
been what amounts to nothing short of a revolution in 
industrial affairs. We have seen England lose much of 
her pre-eminence among the industrial nations." 

Please note again, your Honors, the course of 
this orator's reflections. England, he says, has lost 
much of her industrial "pre-eminence." It is a no- 
torious fact that she has lost it by tearing down her 
tariff-dike and exposing herself, a cost-50 country, 
to struggle for her own domestic market with goods' 
from countries whose costs range from 30 down to 
5, our own country at cost-100 being taken as the 
standard. And yet our orator would make you be- 
lieve that it was want of education and not tariff- 



122 

dike protection against a foreign deluge which 
robbed England of industrial supremacy. But back 
again to our orator : 

**We have seen two other nations grow from compara- 
tively small beginnings to places of the first rank." 

These "two other nations," your Honors, are Ger- 
many and the United States, both of which have 
erected high-tariff dikes and shut out a large part 
of the foreign deluge, on the principle that the do- 
mestic market which you have is worth twice as 
much as the domestic market which some other 
fellow has, and to gain which you must compete 
with all creation. And our author says that these 
two nations which have applied this common-sense 
maxim to their industrial affairs are those which, 
"from small beginnings'," have grown "to places of 
the first rank." One would think that this curious 
coincidence would make our orator sit up and take 
notice. But he is not paid to think that way. He 
proceeds : 

"I have indicated what I believe to be the principal 
elements upon which our own industrial success has been 
based." 

Lie had previously pointed out, your Honors, that 
the "principal elements upon which our own indus- 
trial success' has been based" are "unexampled sup- 
plies of raw material" and "an unequalled genius 
for doing things on a great scale." This alone 
would have mai-ked our orator as a member of the 
Importing Trust, without going further into his 
deliverance. But back to our eloquent friend: 



"But we have seen another nation [Gennany] without 
the special advantages of raw material which we have 
«n joyed push forward in a development as rapid as ours, 
and wrest from others in competitive fields the advantage 



123 

they had long held in security. Germany has had the 
scantiest aid from nature to make that progress possible. 
Not only has she had no wealth of raw material such as 
we have had; she has had no vast homogeneous domestic 
market, a factor which has been of vital aid in building 
up our own manufactures. Her people have lacked the 
peculiar inventive ingenuity which has, in many fields 
of industry, been the sole basis for our achievements.'* 



Your Honors, we believe it is a libel thus to write 
down the great German nation as a lot of mechan- 
ical idiots. Our own "peculiar inventive ingenuity" 
is German, as well as English, Irish, Scotch, 
French, Si^anish, and all the rest. For we are all 
importations ; and there is not a rivulet of the "in- 
ventive ingenuity" now bragged about by us which 
did not take its rise in the great European spring 
of intelligence. But let that pass and back again 
to our Importing Trust orator : 

"Her [German] artisans have not possessed that deli- 
cate artistic sense." 



Hifalutin, your Honors! 



"which has made the handiwork of France superior to 
the obstructions of all tariff walls." 



More hifalutin, your Honors ! 



"Her industries have been forced to grapple with Eng- 
lish competitors who were intrenched behind a domina- 
tion of international markets successfully maintained for 
generations. ' ' 

Your Honors, we beg to call your attention to 
the well-known fact that for three hundred years 
England maintained an almost impassable tariff 
dike against the influx of manufactures in any wise 
competing with her own. During those three cen- 
turies her industries were so developed as to dwarf 
by comparison those of all other countries. She 



124 

had reached such momentum in her flight upward 
that it seemed as if she might forever defy the law 
of gravitation. Her capital was almost unlimited, 
an enormous amount of it being fixed in the best- 
equipped work-shops in the world, manned by the 
descendants of generations of artisans, who, in the 
operations of the factory, inherited the cunning of 
their for-efathers. Her place seemed eternally se- 
cured. But in 1846 she tore down all her protect- 
ing dikes and her destruction began. Not even 
lordly England, easily the giant leader of the earth 
in manufacturing, proved superior to the law of 
economic gravitation expressed in the words: 

** Capital desiring a given market for its output, must 
finally locate in the area of lowest cost of production 
for that market." 

Too powerful even for England was the fact that 
she was a cost-50 country, as we have before stated, 
while just across the channel were cost-30 and 
cost-25 countries, which sucked away her capital 
to build factories on the continent of Europe with 
which to put English industries' out of business. 
The havoc wrought among British wage-producers 
beggars description. Industry after industry went 
into decay. Hundreds of thousands of her wage- 
producers starved slowly to death, their very blood 
and bones being coined for the coffers of her 
wealthy manufacturers who had repealed the Corn 
Laws. And the havoc is still going on. Her only 
hope lies in restoring her tariff-dikes, converting 
her gentlemen's shooting preserves, forests, and 
parks into corn-fields and cattle ranches, bringing 
back her farmers to her farms with the hope of life, 
and relieving the congestion of wage-producers at 
manufacturing centres until manufacturers are 



125 

forced to pay liTing wages to their workers. Eng- 
land's plight is' so plain that a blind man can see it. 
And yet we have our orator laying England's loss 
of primacy to want of technical education ! Your 
Honors, it is not education in anything but human- 
ity to her wage-producers that England needs. Put 
good wages ahead of the English wage-producer, 
and he will take care of his own education and that 
of his children. It is in the breed. Our orator 
continues : 

**But amidst a poverty of natural resources,"— 

Bismarck built a high tariff-dike, our orator 
might sav and account for the whole matter; but 
he is afflicted with Importing-Trust blindness and 
could not see a tariff-dike three feet away. He 
continues : 



— "and from among a people not singularly gifted 
either with inventive ability or artistic temperament, we 
have seen emerge in a generation the great industrial 
forces of the German Empire. The time is within the 
memory of most of us when Germany was in large meas- 
ure an agricultural state winning hut meagre return from 
sterile acres. There were neither rich mines below ground 
nor exhaustless forests above. Whatever was done by 
the Germans had to be done in the sweat of their brows. 
Whatever they have accomplished we must admit fairly 
earned, for they have been heirs to few bounties of 
nature. I have made a somewhat careful study of Ger- 
many's economic success, and in doing that I have be- 
come firmly convinced that the explanation of the re- 
markable German progress is to be traced in the most 
direct manner to the German system of education. The 
schoolmaster is the great corner-stone of Germany's re- 
markable commercial and industrial progress. The school 
system of Germany bears a relation to the economic 
situation that is not met with in any other country." 

Your Honors, the source of this effusion is the 
heart of the Importing Trust, wily plaintiff herein. 
The orator who uttered these words did not believe 
them himself. For he is an intelligent man, and 



a_26 

we do not think that his brain-cells are so arranged 
as to make a cart couchant in front of a horse ram- 
pant his heraldry. But to lay to education Ger- 
many's "remarkable commercial and industrial 
progress'' is merely to put the cart before the horse. 
The first tariff-dike as a bulwark to industry was 
made for Germany by Bismarck some time after 
the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. Our orator, just 
quoted, assures us that "the time is within the mem- 
ory of most of us when Germany was in large mea- 
sure an agricultural state winning but meager re- 
turn from sterile acres." That was something like 
a generation ago, and before protection was adopted 
by Germany as a definite national policy. What- 
ever tariff existed before that time was' only inci- 
dentally protective. But a consistent tariff -dike, 
b}^ reserving to her own capital the German do- 
mestic trade, no sooner gave Germany a chance to 
market the fact that she was a cost-30 country, as 
against England's cost-50, than Germany ceas;ed to 
be "in large measure an agricultural state winning 
but meagre return from sterile acres," and became 
a manufacturing state, the same one mentioned by 
our orator as having assisted to drive England 
down from her proud industrial primacy to the 
third rank. Now, your Honors, it seems to us that 
it is worse than silly to believe that education in 
already-educated Germany gave to German capital 
the certainty of getting back, mark for mark, and 
a. little more, what it invested in manufactures for 
the German domestic market. Of what use would 
"technical education" have been to Germans who 
had no manufacturing industries in wliich to get 
back some return for the expense of becoming 
"technically" educated? If German technical edu- 
cation lias put in an appearance, it is certain that 



127 

it appeared because the iae lories had appeared, and 
the factories were biiilt with Germany's tariff-dike 
as a foundation. 

Our orator, your Honors, says that we here owe 
our long step ahead to our "unexampled supplies 
of raw material" and "unequalled genius for doing 
things on a great scale," which he otherwise alludes 
to as "inventive genius." But we have no technical 
schools worthy of the name, or, at any rate, none 
that, for numbers and age, have had any effect 
whatever on the prosperity which set in strong 
for us at the date of the erection of the Dingley 
dike. 

He says that Germany has' neither raw mate- 
rial nor inventive genius to account for her indus- 
trial advance, but that she has a school system 
which bears a relation to the economic situation 
that is not met with in any other country, and that 
"the explanation of the remarkable German prog- 
ress is to be traced in the most direct manner tc 
the German system of educativ»n.'' 

He also says "we have seen England lose much 
of her pre-eminence among industrial nations. We 
have seen two other nations grow from compara- 
tively small beginnings to places of the first rank." 
But we all know that England has inventive genius, 
natural resources in her mines of coal and iron, 
and plentiful education. 

Now, remembering that, as to comparative costs, 
we stand at cost-100, England at cost-50, and Ger- 
many at cost-30, let us gather all these facts into 
a table, in order that we may see whether the wily 
plaintiff, the Importing Trust, by the mouth of its- 
servant, our orator, is talking rationally when, 
comparing England, Germany and the United 
States, it lays to "technical education" the differ- 



128 

ence between going ahead and behind. Here is the 
table : 



Nation 




Tariff Dike 


Cost 
Number 


Technical 
Education 


Inventive 
Genius 


Natural 
Resources 


Movement 


England 


Revenue 


50 


Fair 


Good 


Important 


Backward 


Germany 


Protective 


30 


Best 


Poor 


Meagre 


Ahead 


United 
States 


Protective 


ino 


Lacking 


Best 


"Unexampled"! 


Ahead 



Your Honors, we have printed and now hand you 
copies of this table. Please note that, with regard 
to the characteristics at the head of the columns, 
the whole three countries differ in cost, education, 
inventive genius and natural resources. We think 
even the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, will 
agree with us here. As to the remaining two 
points, England is directly opposed to Germany 
and the United States, upon these two points, and 
these alone, Germany and the United States stand- 
ing together, and the table showing that, irrespec- 
tive of cost, education, inventive genius, and natural 
resources, both of the countries which have protec- 
tive-tariff dikes are going ahead, while England is 
going behind. Moreover, as* to the four non-coin- 
ciding points, Germany differs more widely from 
the United States than from England ; and yet Ger- 
many and the United States, having similar tariff- 
dikes, also stand the same with regard to progress. 
How a person whose brain-cells did not illustrate 
the cart before the horse could lay progress in Ger- 
many to "technical education," when "technical 
education" in Germany did not precede but fol- 
lowed her forward movement, and is lacking in the 
United States, the second of the two nations who 
have grown "from comparatively small beginnings 



129 

to places of the first rank," is a mystery which only 
the intelligence of an Importing-Trust orator could 
solve. Why would it not be more logical, your 
Honors, to attribute the progress of Germany and 
the United States to the characteristics in which 
they are similar, viz., the protective-tariff dike, than 
to a characteristic in which they are so dissimilar 
as that it is gloomily lacking in the one but radi- 
antly present in the other? 

;We repeat, your Honors, that the making little 
of the tariff-dike as the bulwark of American pros- 
perity has only one source, viz., the interest that 
would be most injured in pocket if our people all 
realized that our tariff-dike is our only hope against 
national annihilation; which interest, of course, is 
the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust. But 
speeches, magazine articles, and newspaper edi- 
torials, all arising from one or the other of these 
wily plaintiffs, are busy throughout this country, 
doing just what was done by the orator whose words 
we have quoted; that is, hiding the Dingley Dike 
behind a veil of sophistry and fallacy. But some- 
thing had to be done, your Honors. The Dingley 
Dike, in such sharp contrast with Cleveland free 
trade, was so plainly the rock upon which our pros- 
perity was built, that the campaign of explanation 
was a necessity, if the wily plaintiffs were not to be 
destroyed by the sheer common sense of the people. 
In passing, we cannot help regretting, your Honors, 
that the brain-cells of the majority of our people are 
not so well ballasted that they cannot be paralyzed 
by every Importing Trust sophist who gets their 

ear. 



130 



XVII. '-• ^ * 

AND;, AS SYSTEMATICALY IGNORING A BROKEN TARIFF- 
DIKE AS THE SOURCE OP INCREASED IMPORTS^ AND 
LAYING SUCH INCREASE TO OTHER CAUSES BE- 
YOND THE REACH OF THE DIKE AS A REMEDY^ THE 
WILY PLAINTIFF STILL SEEKS TO BLIND AMER- 
ICANS TO THEIR PERIL. 

Your Honors, we have just shown you how the 
wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, has tried to 
account, by ^^technical education,^' for Germany's 
success, denying that Germany to account therefor 
has inventive genius, natural resources or other 
things, and, as the real cause of her prosperity, 
wholly ignoring her high tariff -dike. Your Honors, 
it is as certain as anything can be that Germany's 
success comes from her tariff-dike and the keep- 
ing of her domestic market wherewith to induce 
her capitalists to promote domestic industry; and 
it is just as certain that neither "skill'' nor "inven- 
tive genius" has had anything more to do with 
Germany's success than with that of any other na- 
tion, since "skill" and "inventive genius" are at 
least as universal as the reward therefor which always 
accompanies a well-protected domestic market. 
But as this wily plaintiff accounts for a bounding 
German export trade without seeing the high tariff - 
dike as the cause, so it also accounts for rising im- 
ports in the United States without seeing the holes 
in the American tariff-dike through which imports 
are rushing. The high tariff-dike in Germany and 
the low-tariff dike in the United States work to- 
gether perfectly, through our increase in German 
exports, to drown out American goods from the 



131 

American domestic maikel, and yet the oratoi" just 
quoted says Germany's prosperity comes from 
"technical education/' not from its protected do- 
mestic market; and the Germans themselves say 
it is "German skill and faithfulness in manufac- 
ture/' and not the hole in our dike which lets them 
into our market. In this way, your Honors, the 
conspirators against our national prosperity, they 
who are bent on taking from us the savings of a 
decade, in order to keep our ignorance for future 
profit, seek to blind us Americans to the cause of 
our weakness, on the one hand, and, on the other 
hand, the cause of the strength of our great pro- 
tectionist adversary the Empire of Germany. 

We have before alluded to the German agree- 
ment, w^hereby the Koosevelt Administration pur- 
chased misery for millions of our wage-earners by 
a compact which tore down our tariff-dike from 
one-fifth to one-half on German goods. This be- 
trayal of our country is doing its hellish Avork. 
German goods are pouring in here as never before. 
The Germans have so far succeeded in destroying 
our tariff-dike by the Von Sternburg route that 
they are willing to remit their efforts for "tariff 
concessions"; but they are laying to their great 
"skill," not to our broken dike, the immense in- 
crease in their exports to this country. 

Mr. Koosevelt is trying to ride at once two horses 
racing in opposite directions; but it is a very hard 
straddle. He wants to pose to our workers as a 
friend of "labor," as the "champeen trust-buster/' 
and at the same time pose as a friend of Germany 
and of the New^ York importers. He wants to be all 
things to all men ; to serve God and Mammon and to 
pray to both with the same breath. And the Ger- 
mans are trying to help him fool the American peo- 



132 

pie ; they are trying to make us think there is not so 
much of a hole in the dike after all; and that any- 
way we cannot build dikes high enough to keep out 
the results of German skill, and therefore might 
better not try. They say the Dingley Bill — even 
the Dingley Tariff, so high and imposing — ^'has 
proved a sieve, through which the torrent of Ger- 
man enterprise flows unchecked." But it was Ger- 
man enterprise in "getting away" with the Koose- 
velt administration and no enterprise that Ger- 
mans ever yet displayed in their mills and factories. 
Your Honors, we propose reading to you from 
the Literary Digest of October 26, 1907, an inval- 
uable publication of world-gossip most reliably re- 
ported. In this magazine, of the date above given, 
is the following: 

"A ROSY VIEW OF GERMANY'S TRADE WITH 
AMERICA. 

"The German Government, having heen unable to se- 
cure any tariff concessions from this country" — 

except the German Agreement which is very nearly 
a total prostration of our entire tariff-dike towards 
Germany — 

"is telling its people through the semi-official CONTI- 
NENTAL CORRESPONDENCE that German trade can 
win its own way without concessions from anybody. ' ' 

A sop for babies, your Honors. Does this German 
Government organ mean to say that we, for in- 
stance, could not totally shut out its goods, if we 
desired? But to continue: 



"In its effort to gain tariff modifications from the 
United States the Berlin Government has been urged on 
by the German manufactures, who want our tariff bars 
lowered so they can sell more goods here." 



133 

Why, your Honorjs, sliuuid they require the bars 
lowered to sell more goods here, when the German- 
Koosevelt Agreement has left as good as no bars at 
all for German goods? We think this sort of talk 
is for broad public consumption; for peddling 
through the United States to fool our people to 
think that the bars have not already been lowered, 
and that if the Germans come in here and take our 
domestic market away from us entirely-, it will 
prove that no tariff bars can keep out the ' 'skillful 
Germans'^ — skillful in back-door politics, your Hon- 
ors. Therefore, the tariff bars being of no use to 
keep out these brilliant Teutons, we might as well 
resign ourselves to the fate the politico-economic 
gods have meted out to us, throw down the dike en- 
tirely and become colonists to the German Empire. 

Why, your Honors, talk about the German War- 
Lord colonizing South America, to the menace of 
the Monroe Doctrine and our sovereign security 
here, bless your ingenuous hearts, he is colonizing 
these very United States with the fabrics of his 
factories, to the Teutonizing of us all to the shade 
to which the proximity of Herr Von Sternburg has 
already colored Herr Von Trust-Buster Roosevelt, 
like a Dutch meerschaum ! But back to our Liter- 
ary Digest: 

"The German Agrarians second this effort with the 
suggestion that if we do not capitulate, Germany should 
retaliate by raising its own tariff bars against American 
products. This is just what it cannot very well do, how- 
ever, for Germany must have our grain and meats, and to 
raise the tariff on these supplies, while enriching the 
Agrarian landowners, would be to raise the cost of living 
in Germany — and that is what makes Socialists. So the 
Government is letting well enough alone, and assuring the 
tariff complainants that they are doing splendidly" — 

Splendidly, indeed, your Honors ! Our dike has 
been smashed with a Dutch club and the Germans 



134 

have here, practically t rec^ the greatest market in 
the world, which they can take from us as fast as 
they please, not because of their superior skill, your 
Honors, but because they are a cost-30 country and 
we are a cost-100 country. 

— ^they are doing splendidly and don't need any help," 

Except, your Honors, a Koosevelt Administration 
at Washington and a Von Sternburg hob-nobbing 
with the President in the White House. But back 
to our Digest : 

"And it is true that Germany is only second to Great 
Britain in her trade with us and is well in the lead of 
any other country." 

And will keep in the lead, your Honors, and soon 
outstrip Great Britain in our markets here, for 
Great Britain is a cost-50 country against Ger- 
many's cost-30, and the biggest profit-margin is 
going to beat everything else. But to continue our 
reading : 

"The tariff on imports into the United States imposed 
by law some ten years ago has not, according to THE 
CONTINENTAL CORRESPONDENCE, interfered in any 
way with the sale of German goods in the United States. ' ' 

Then, your Honors, in the name of truth, why 
did the Germans threaten to double their tariffs 
against our goods and why did Mr. Koosevelt lie 
down and let them walk over him in the German 
Agreement? But, your Honors, we believe this talk 
is all for show — just to conceal the fact that tlu^ 
Germans have captured our markets by diplomacy. 
There is something so puzzling about all this contra- 
dictory business that we cannot quite reconcile our- 
selves' to believe that this dark-lantern, stealthy 



135 

German Agreement was not made to the immense 
profit of somebody here in the United States. We 
have been sold out, your Honors. Our invaluable 
domestic market, the envy of the earth, has been 
sold out to the Germans for a solid quid pro quo. 
We cannot believe that Americans are such fools 
that they do not know the value in gold of such 
a large section of our market as was delivered to 
the Germans by this infamous Agreement. Who 
got the quid pro quo? And was it money, flattery, 
political popularity or poodles? It was something, 
your Honors, or else the American end of this deal 
was in the hands of unreasonable beings. Still to 
our Digest: 

' ' This it considers the result of German skill and faith- 
fulness in manufacture, and * Made in Germany, ' it thinks, 
is a guaranty that should control any market." 

And yet these same fellows, before the German 
Agreement was born, said if we did not aid German 
"skilP' and "Made in Germany'' by cutting down 
our dike, they would cut us out of their market for 
grains and meats, which is about all we sell them, 
except raAV cotton. Back to the jewsharp. 

Of the increase of the German importations into 
this country this organ remarks : 

**In every respect the fiscal year ending in 1907 shows 
record figures. The value of German wares imported 
into the United States reached the amount of $161,- 
500,000, while Germany bought $240,000,000 worth of 
American goods. That shows an excess of 50 per cent, 
on the side of Germany's purchases and seems at the 
first glance very disadvantageous for the Fatherland. 
But we find that seven years ago this excess amounted 
to 90 per cent., and in 1898 even to 130 per cent, of 
Germany's exports into the United States. In proportion 
at least the German balance of trade shows a consider- 
able improvement. If we limit our attention to the in- 
crease in the last two years" — 

Ah, your Honors, these bland Teutons should have 



1H6 

said, "in the last three months'' or since our tariff - 
dike was crushed with the Eoosevelt battering- 
ram! But, no, it is the fairy wand of German 
"skill and faithfulness in manufacture" that did 
the job. Sleep, my baby, sleep, 'tis not the cat lap- 
ping your milk that disturbs your dreams but the 
wing-rustle of the fairy "Skill !" This is all a beau- 
tiful lullaby, your Honors, written for the score 
"Benevolent Fairy," dedicated to the wily plaintiff, 
the Importing Trust. Here is more if it : 

** 'If we limit our attention to the increase in the last 
two years, we find even absolutely the same figures. 
Germany got in 1907 American goods of $43,000,000 value 
more than in 1905; and by the same amount of $43,- 
000,000 we find the German imports into the United 
States higher in 1907 than in 1905. Now, if we go into 
details, we notice that among the American goods im- 
ported into Germany cotton is principally responsible 
for the increase. On account of the large demand of the 
German spinning mills and the higher prices, the United 
States increased their sales of raw cotton to Germany 
within two years by not less than $34,000,000, so that 
the cotton imported into Germany accounts for 80 per 
cent, of this very remarkable increase.' 

**When we come to ask the proportion between the 
exports and imports of the United States and Germany, 
this writer tells us that while Gennan exports to the 
United States are less than those of the United States 
to Germany in regard to raw materials, the contrary is 
the case when we calculate the interchange of manu- 
factured articles. America exported to Germany $90,- 
600,000 worth of such goods for the year ending 1907, but 
imported from Germany manufactured goods to the 
amount of $147,000,000." 

Yes, your Honors, the Germans get our meats 
and grains to feed their workers and underbid our 
factory hands in this market under the German 
Agreement. They take our raw cotton, to make 
into cotton fabrics which are sent back here to take 
our market from our own factories and bread from 
our own cotton workers. Our Sunny South is the 
natural field for all forms of cotton manufactures; 
and yet tbe German Agreement takes the work 



137 

from Southern mills and gives it to the Germans, 
and we pay the freight both ways. How the South 
can keep quiet under this outrage is a puzzle. This 
wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, in order to 
fatten from its commissions on foreign goods, would 
keep us here forever as the coarse and codgerly 
makers of "raw materials" to send abroad for man- 
uafcture and return to us. This is evidently Roose- 
veltian philosophy. Still more from the digest: 

"The writer accounts for this as follows: *In knitted 
fabrics the well-known superiority of the German in- 
dustry told all the more under the high import duties of 
the Dingley tariff' " 

Oh, your Honors, this is too much ! They were so 
afraid, were these benevolent Teutons, that they 
would take our whole market under the high tariffs 
which so made "the well-known superiority of the 
German industry tell all the more'^ — take all our 
market and starve us quite to death, that they 
begged and implored us to take down the tariff 
wall and take away their deadly advantage; and 
when we would not, as a nation, listen to their 
prayer, they got this wily plaintiff, the Importing 
Trust, through its lobby at the White House and its 
representatives in the Cabinet to go with cat-like 
stealth and in the dead of night and unlock our 
tariff-dike gates with the key of the German Agree- 
ment, just to save us, even against our childish 
wills, from the dire disaster which was surely 
awaiting us, unless we exit down the dike and cut 
off this dreadful advantage over our own factories 
which this high dike gave the Germans in our do- 
mestic market. Such devotion to humanity, even 
when it could be counted in a loss of many marks, 
was never witnessed before. Well, let us read this 
Teutonic philanthropist a little further: 



138 

"Indeed, against the American articles of ordinary use 
no other European industries could compete in this line; 
we therefore find that 90 per cent, of all imported knitted 
fabrics came from Germany. The same remark holds 
good with regard to toys and coal-tar colors. For leather 
gloves and furs the latest change of fashion favored the 
German importer, as the American firms could not pro- 
duce enough for the suddenly increased demand" — 

Oh, what a sinful falsehood, your Honors! 
"Could not produce enough for the suddenly in- 
creased demand!" Why, certainly not.. If they 
had, this wil}^ plaintiff, the Importing Trust, Avould 
not have won its commissions. That is the uniform 
reason, your Honors, why Americans cannot pro- 
duce this or that thing fast enough. The meaning 
always is "fast enough to leave the profits of it 
in the hands of the Importing Trust." If our client, 
American Production, were paying this wily plain- 
tiff, the same, or a little better, commissions than 
are being paid to it by Foreign Production, we 
never would hear anything about being too slow or 
too unskillful or too anything else to supply our 
market here. But let us hear this m^^stifier out : 

"Earthenware and porcelain would be imported in 
large quantities because the German manufacturers 
adapted their produce to the American taste that favors 
bright colors and fantastic patterns." 

Yes, your Honors, an„y way to account for their 
filching our markets here, except by the fact of 
their pitting their cost-30 against our cost-100 and 
by German Agreements bribing our sentinels, to let 
them pass our tariff line. Hurely, we are South Sea 
Islanders, Avith rings in our noses and bells on our 
feet, fond "of bright colors and fantastic patterns," 
if that Avill account for the Germans beating us in 
our OAvn market and hide the hole in the tariff- 
dike. Still more prodigies from the German magi- 
cijins: 



139 

"Paper and stationery were, in the last few years, 
exported from Germany at ridiculously low prices on 
account of a crisis in the trade" — 



Which illustrates what we said some time back, 
your Honors. "Crises in trade" abroad and their 
consequent fire and bankrupt sales could drown out 
this market but for our tariff-dike; for there is 
enough of the world and enough of such sales go- 
ing on all the time to supply us with all things at 
costs even far lower than the normal cost abroad. 
Our dike should be built to heaven instead of being 
cut down to hell for our workers. But let us go on 
with our reading: 



"Cement was much in request on account of the San 
Francisco catastrophe and could not be immediately 
supplied by American manufacturers." 



Of course not, your Honors. There is always on 
hand an Importing-Trust jobber ready to rob our 
workers by any pretext at any short notice. No 
American enterprise is ever in such a real hurry 
that it should not be compelled to await the rising 
of American Production to the occasion. The wel- 
fare of those concerned in the development of the 
waiting enterprise is of no greater consequence 
than the uniform development of this whole nation. 
Reading again: 



"The same may be said of cellulose. wlnVh m 1907 
was exDorted from Gftrmanv in+o the TTnited S+a+^s to 
the amount of $858,500 or twenty-one times as much as 
in 1899. 

"In short, Gevmanv. arrordinflr to t?iis writer, has befin 
tri.umwhant. All comiaetitors. lil^-e 'Dan+iTiar time.* *toil 
after b^r in vain.' and the Dinsjiev Bill has Tarovpd a 
pieve, throufrh whinh the torrent of German enterwrise 
flows unchecked. To quote the last paragraph of this 
arresting article: 

" *It ip clear that in the interchange of merchandise 
other eonf^itions. even of a transient nature, are far more 
important than the effect of a custom.s tariff.' " 



140 

Conditions, your Honors, of such "transient na- 
ture/' for instance, as the sort of an Administration 
we have at Washington. A Eoosevelt can discount 
the most effective tariff-dike in the world, and do it 
without even being suspected by the dear devoted 
people of being a rank free trader. We think our 
Teutonic friend is quite right. When you have at 
court a Von Sternburg joker in a Eoosevelt pack, 
you can well say, "I care not who makes tariffs for 
the American people, so long as I own the Execu- 
tive ear.'^ But let us finish this triumph of mysti- 
fication : 

** 'The German manufacturers and exporters have suc- 
ceeded so well by the intrinsic merits of their produce, 
the painstaking study of American wants and American 
tastes' " — 

For gaudy colors and uncouth shapes, your Hon- 
ors, our fellow savages! 

— " 'and by the quick utilization of the proper means 
for finding customers on the other side of the Atlantic. 
The progress of American industries and the more severe 
competition of the exporting countries of Europe were 
the principal factors to be counted with. As a matter 
of fact the Dingley tariff did not prevent an extraordi- 
nary growth of the German exports into the United States 
during the last ten years.' " 

Your Honors, we quite agree with the Literary 
Digest that this is an "arresting article''; so ar- 
resting that it ought to arrest and throw in jail — a 
figurative jail, your Honors^ — any one in this coun- 
try who not only does not root for tariff-dike 
revision downwards, but who does not root 
with all his might for such an immediate 
tariff-dike revision upwards as that the dike 
will be something more than a "sieve 
through which the torrent of German enterprise 
flows unchecked/' The Dingley Law never was an 



141 

effective protection measure. That is proved by 
the tide of imports which has been rising ever since 
it was passed. According to Republican statements, 
it was only made high enough just to offset the ad- 
vantage in cheaper labor held by foreign produc- 
ers and give our own Avorkers in their own market a 
mere equal chance with foreign workers. But since 
it was made, foreigners have been improving their 
machinery and methods, and, like the Germans, 
have been making special efforts to get into our mar- 
ket, with the result that the Dingle^^ Dike was far 
too low, even before the Roosevelt Administration 
practically destroyed it by the German Agreement. 
The Germans now tell us, in the article just quoted 
that "the torrent of German enterprise flows un- 
checked" through the tariff dike, which has proven 
a "sieve''; that practically they have beaten down 
all opposition, even from our American industries, 
although they admit, now that the fight is over and 
they are in full possession of our market, that in the 
scrimmage which preceded their final victory, "the 
progress of American industries" was to be counted 
Avith to make their success more difficult. But they 
have succeeded, not because "protection does not 
protect," but because, in addition to our cost-100 
market never having been half-way protected 
against a cost-20 world, we have been nightmared 
by an administration at the head of which is a man 
who knows nothing about true American business, 
who has taken his catechism from New York im- 
porters, who has filled his cabinet with free traders, 
who has flagellated Cuban Treaties through Con- 
gress, who has removed faithful custom house offi- 
cers in order that the wily plaintiff, the Importing 
Trust, might have a freer hand, and, to ci^own all, 
has made a German Agreement which practically 



142 

destroys whatever real protection there ever was 
in the Dingley Dike. 

The wily plaintiff the Importing Trust, has great 
hopes of success. It thinks in addition to the Ger- 
man Agreement, it will get a downward revision 
of the dike within a reasonable time. It feels that 
its campaign against our client, American Produc- 
tion, its maddening of the thoughtless people to a 
frenzy about the "trusts" and their sales abroad 
cheaper than at home, and all its wily ways, will 
soon bear a rich fruitage of commissions and brok- 
erages, as it sits in our markets once more supreme 
mistress and monopolist there. But it knows that 
as surely as the sun continues to shine, it no sooner 
will get comfortably seated than the greatest panic 
the world has ever known in any country will 
shake this devoted land from end to end ; and it has 
already begun to hedge against such an event; it 
already is devising means to say "This panic is 
none of my doing. Look ! Was not the New York 
panic in October, 1907, the result of the Dingley 
Tariff? Did it not happen while the country was 
enjoying the highest protective tariff it ever knew? 
How can you charge me with this disaster, when 
such disasters come, protection or no protection? 
You cannot shake your gory locks at me. You can- 
not say I did it." It is laying the ground for this 
now, your Honors, for it has already started its 
chorus among the New York papers who owe to it 
their lives. Here is a hymn which chants to heaven 
the melodies of the Importing Trust : 

"A PANIC COME HOME TO BOOST. 

*' People are "beginning to write to the newspapers to 
ask if this is to he known as the 'Roosevelt' panic. That 
is comparatively unimportant. The certain and signifi- 
cant thing is that it will be known as a Republican and 



143 

high-tariff panic. Protesc as Republicans may, they will 
be held responsible. And it will not only be poetic but 
political justice that they should be. 

**Out of their own mouths the Republican party and the 
Dingleyites will stand condemned. * * * * * 

"Whatever other effects the panic may have, it has 
at least dealt a death-blow to the tariff superstition. 
Perhaps in no other way could we have got rid of it. 
Hereafter, any man who uses the argument that you 
must not demand the abolition of tariff outrages, since, 
if you do, you will imperil prosperity, will be laughed 
at. The way is at last open to attack the question of 
protective duties in statesmanlike fashion, without hav- 
ing to face the abuse and prejudice and idolatrous ig- 
norance which have for years made it difficult to deal 
with the tariff like rational men." 



Well, your Honors, at the risk of being laughed 
at, at least by this creature of the wily plaintiff, the 
Importing Trust, which has owned it for over a 
hundred years, we are going to say that the whole 
prosperity of this country depends entirely on '^r- 
iff outrages," if that expression suits the gentle- 
man w^ho wrote this editorial. AVe say this with 
the perfect knowledge that nobody in this or any 
other country can successfully contradict us. We 
say this because, if any one has a grain of common 
business sense, he knows that a cost-100 country 
cannot do business in competition with a cost-20 
world. The business-volume, and, therefore, the 
prosperity-volume depends, as we have said be- 
fore, on the wage-volume, and the wage-volume 
here would dwindle towards zero the moment our 
domestic market, a cost and wage-100 market, 
your Honors, were opened to competition with the 
cost and wage-20 world. This is too i^lain for any 
talk. Therefore, we repeat that, not only will an 
''abolition of tariff outrages'^ ''imperil prosperity," 
but it will destroy this country as a civilized prop- 
osition. Any business man, not living by Import- 
ing-Trust commissions, not only knows this, but 



will say so even at the risk of being laughed at 
by some Importing-Trust donkey. 

And we are going to repeat, your Honors, that 
no real panic ever struck this country, while a 
good tariff-dike kept production and value-making 
at the front in this country. We have had dikes 
like the Dingley Dike, which only half did their 
business; so that, in time, the thing became so 
leaky that our producers were put out of the mar- 
ket; and then, when panics and depression came 
on, the Importing Trust was privileged to say, as 
in the present case, that the "tariff outrage" had 
caused the panic. The October panic in New York, 
to which this writer refers, was not a real busi- 
ness panic at all; it was not a material panic; no- 
body failed; the banks all stood pat. It was a 
Christian Science panic, all in jour mind, your 
Honors, all in the thinking so. A lot of copper 
securities, worth but a fraction of what they were 
puffed up to be, were taken by a great bank as 
collateral to loans. Somebody found it out — we 
believe it was the New York Clearing House — and 
"peached." Then everybody thought that every 
other bank was just as bad; and so everybody ran 
for his money and made a "run" on some half 
dozen banks. Why, your Honors, that was no 
more a national, business and property-panic, 
closing mills, throwing millions out of employ- 
ment, filling the land with starvation, and making 
soup-houses the only real thing, than, when some- 
body hollers fire when there is no fire, a panic in 
a theatre somewhere in a little city, is a panic 
in all the theatres of the United States. And yet 
this rather over-zealous s^ervant of the wily plain- 
tiff holds it up as a real panic and says protec- 



145 

tion, wliich we have not got, is the reason of it, — 
just hollers ^'fire'^ when there is no fire. 

If we are tired of prosperity at any time, your 
Honors, we have only to open our wage-100 mar- 
ket to the wage-20 world and our demand will be 
landed all over creation rather than in our mills', 
and prosperity will be no more and panic will 
claim us as its own. Then if we want to turn 
panic out and get prosperity back again, all we 
shall have to do is to close our ports, and turn 
our one-hundred-and-seventy-thousand-million dol- 
lar business demand over our own wheel of indus- 
try again and the same old mill will grind out 
prosperity once more as sure as fate and as fine 
as a fiddle. There is no mystery about this. No 
Christian Science in the whole rig. It is just 
plain business. We are not prosperous because 
we feel so; but we are prosperous because we are 
so; and that consists in getting back a dollar and 
five cents for our outlay of a dollar, which is a 
thing we never can do when, in the same market, 
the cost-20 world is bidding against us and our 
cost-100 product. 

But as to whether the Christian Science flurry 
in and about Wall Street in October last was a 
"Roosevelt" panic we cannot quite say. The state of 
the public mind had something to do with the effect 
that the public announcement of banking rot- 
teness had upon bank depositors. It is strange, 
surely, that people should think all the banks 
were rotten because one was; any more 
than they should think all men are bad be- 
cause occasionally or semi-occasionally a man 
goes wrong. But it may be that Mr. Roosevelt's 
ravings against "malefactors of great wealth," 
"swollen fortunes/' "very rich men," and the "bad 



146 

corporations/' in suni-e way made thoughtless 
people count all banks and moneyed institutions 
as being tarred with the same stick; so that when 
it seemed as if the rottenness had reached the 
banks, it set a lot of people skeery. That is all 
there was of the panic which, according to the 
Importing Trust parrot from which we have just 
quoted, proves the tariff-dike a failure. There was 
some Koosevelt in it, no doubt. The public mind 
was ready to suspect all sorts of trouble, because 
its Chief Magistrate had gone batty on the same 
subject. And what he said about it had more in- 
fluence, because it was more advertised. 

But, your Honors, we somehow think peojple 
take Mr. Roosevelt altogether too seriously. He 
is a great show. A good deal of an actor. When 
he is sober he does not more than half believe 
himself what he says so earnestly under the demi- 
divine afflatus. But he is a good self-hypnotizer, 
a self-suggester into all sorts of situations and 
moods. He has a very large talent for imitation — 
Mr. Bryan says he imitated him — and only mod- 
erate talent for sticking to a thing; and when he 
has the "power'' he naturally thinks he is the man 
or mood he is unconsciously imitating. But he soon 
switches off on to a sidetrack somewhere, blows 
off steam, draws his fires; and goes to sleep. 
When he wakes up, he is ashamed of himself be- 
cause he thinks he has let up a little on "my poli- 
cies" and he clambers on to the nearest platform 
car in the train and says he has not forgot, even 
if some malefactors of great wealth, just to dis- 
credit him, have conspired to bring on money- 
trouble in Wall Street. Then, too, besides being 
a great mimic of manly moods and an all-around 
self-fooler, he likes praise, that is, to be tickled 



147 

because he is so good, liis love of praise is very 
strong; and in addition to this Ave have in our 
Hero a weakness in reasoning power and a not too 
over-groAvn benevolence, linked to great love of 
blood-letting. Why your Honors, he gets so thirsty 
for blood that when malefactors of great wealth 
have all reached the tall timber, he has to cut off 
into the swamps and hunt deer and bear and other 
innocent things; unless', perhaps, he runs across 
a herd of Mississippi pilots on his way afield. 
:We think, your Honors, a study of these few and 
simple characteristics pretty well accounts for Mr. 
Roosevelt. He does love praise so much that, if 
he should stay President long enough and exchange 
all he now has left to swap for a tickling, namely, 
the rest of our markets, for such a tipsy titilation 
as those which coaxed from him the Cuban Treaty, 
Wakeman's dismissal, and the German agreement, 
he would be the unhappiest man in the world. 
Then, your Honors, he is an impetuous thing. This 
taken in connection with his' love of the lime-light 
and his weak benevolence makes him a good deal 
of a savage. Look at the way he publicly jumped 
on poor innocent old Tyner and pushed him into 
his grave! And how he dismissed from the ser- 
vice a whole battalion of colored boys without 
any proof of guilt against any one of them! And 
then the way he w^hirled down on poor Nicholls, 
the pilot of the Hartwig, was something scandal- 
ous. And in this matter, too, his action carried 
him right up to if not across the impeachment 
line. He could not remove Nicholls, but he could 
remove the men who could remove Nicholls if they 
refused to remove Nicholls. And he made them 
do it, illegally, too; for the steamboat inspectors 
had no right to remove the pilot unless he was 



148 

proveu guilty of a breach of the rules; and they 
not only could not prove he had been so guilty 
but it was proved to them by a cloud of expert 
witnesses that he had not. Nevertheless, this 
Apostle of the Square Deal himself condemned 
and executed this poor man on the spot, without 
judge or jury, when the law provides that no such 
pilot can be dismissed except after his day in court 
and the proving that he has broken the rules. 
If anything much worse than this was ever done 
by Nero, we have failed to note it. Your Honors, 
we do not know what Mr. Eoosevelt calls himself 
when he does* such things as that, but when we use 
our power to remove a steamboat inspector to make 
him remove an innocent pilot, whom the steam- 
boat inspector has no cause to remove, and all be- 
cause in some way said pilot has ruffled our im- 
perial dignity, we call ourselves an undesirable 
citizen. This sort of conduct is hardly moral. 
But is not Mr. Eoosevelt moral? Yes; but his 
morality is all under heavy bonds to love of 
praise, love of a scrap and "my policies." Your 
Honors, that single case of the Pilot NichoUs, to 
say nothing about the Brownsville matter, our ven- 
erable friend Tyner, Dr. Long, and the rest, proves 
to us that we are right in saying that Mr. Eoose- 
velt is a natural actor, an impersonator of moods 
and manners, and that really his "square deal" 
sentiment is for political use only. We do not 
ask his pardon for this opinion and this expression 
of it. He has convicted himself. The Constitu- 
tion guarantees to us all "the equal protection of 
the laws;" and Mr. Eoosevelt, as President, is 
charged to "take care that the laws be faithfully 
executed;" that is, laws pertaining to the Gov- 
ernment of the United States; and yet, instead of 



149 

seeing that the United tStates law governing the 
misdemeanors of pilots was "faithfully executed/' 
he took especial care to see that, by the breaking 
of the laws for his personal spite, they were vio- 
lated and a jDilot irretrievably wronged. 

The American people are indulgent towards the 
nnspanked, roistering bo}-. They smile at pranks 
of his which they would jail a full-grown for. 
Whether as a sophomore in college he hazes the 
freshmen in their dormitories or as a freshman 
in the White House he hazes the seniors on Capi- 
tal Hill, it is all the same. Boys will be boys, 
and the unspanked boy, the hous en polei, is the 
favorite of the dear America public. 

People should mind their eyes as well as their 
hasty hearts. A study of the Koosevelt physiog- 
nomy is worth while. If the wolf and the 
bear are the strongest in us, we admire the same 
quadrupeds in others. A study of the out- 
side tells us what there is inside; for people are 
as handsome or as homely on the inside as they 
are on the out. Hero- worship is dangerous; un- 
less the hero is dead or out of office. It paralyzes 
common sense and puts blinders over eyes that 
otherwise could see. 

It does not seem to us, your Honors, that a 
man of this mold and make should very seriously 
influence the public mind. He has shown a very 
large lack of just appreciation of his true position 
as President of the United States. He had been 
a Governor of a State and when he became Presi- 
dent did not seem to think there was any change 
of jurisdiction. As he would have recommended 
to a State Legislature laws governing corpora- 
tions, so he recommended to the Congress of the 
United States laws goyeming corporations, al- 



150 

though the Constitution gives Congress no power 
to monke}^ with State citizeuship in this way. 
For, of course, every corporation is a citizen of 
the State of its organization; and although another 
State may make rules' for the admission of for- 
eign corporations to denizenship within the State, 
the Congress of the United States has no power 
whatever to dictate terms to corporations' more 
than to individuals. It has no right to look into 
the organization, stock issue, property-holding, or 
any other matter connected either with an indi- 
vidual person or a corporation within a State. 
Mr. Roosevelt says that some general national law 
should place corporations under the supervision 
of the general Government, in the same manner 
as the national banks are so placed. But Mr. 
Roosevelt seems to overlook the fact that the 
national banks are the creation of Congress origin- 
ally ; and that we may have State banks over which 
Congress has no control. Congress alone has 
power "to coin money and regulate the value there- 
of,'^ and "to borrow money on the credit of the 
United States f and these functions have a peculiar 
connection with the subject of banking, and to 
create and oversee a series of national banks 
might well be within the "general welfare" pro- 
vision of the Constitution, specifically in view of 
the exclusive power of Congress over coinage and 
so over currency. But the "general welfare'' clause 
is void for indefiniteness except when given defi- 
niteness' in matters specifically indicated in sub- 
sequent clauses; and the interstate commerce 
clause or the post-roads clause cannot be construed 
in any wise so as to give Congress the power of 
going into a State and regulating the affairs of 
corporations. As we shall elsewhere argue, the 



151 

power of Congress to "regulate commerce" is only 
power ill rem; and, to use that power to block the 
interstate traffic of a corporation, unless it showed 
up its books and admitted Federal officers to hold 
inquest over its' private methods, would be a species 
of blackmail to stoop to which would put Congress 
on the level of the official who jammed the Cuban 
Treaty through Congress* by holding over Con- 
gressmen the power of destroying their hold on 
their constituencies, by special press-agency treat- 
ment and the appointing power. 

But the strongest reason why the public should 
not take Mr. Roosevelt too seriously is that to get 
the public to take him too seriously is part of 
his trade; and in order to get the public into this 
frame of mind, he knows there is nothing like 
judicious advertising — taking the public into his 
confidence, except in making Roosevelt- SterjSn- 
burg-Wilhelm-Second trade agreements', in which 
the public are the most interested but the least 
"let on." In short Mr. Roosevelt is a politician 
of politicians. It is said by some that he is the 
keenest politician in the United States; and the 
United States* grows some pretty good politicians. 
But then Mr. Roosevelt has had oceans of experi- 
ence. He has been pulling political wires ever 
since he got out of Knickerbockers. Most of us 
remember how he ran for mayor of New York 
something like twenty years ago — we believe he 
was not thirty at the time; and it takes a good 
deal of political skill to get put on a big party's 
ticket for mayor of such a place as New York. And 
ever since his Knickerbocker days he has always 
been a candidate for some kind of an office. He 
pursues politics as he does bears'. He loves the 
excitement of the chase. Now, we believe Mr. 



152 

Koosevelt is no more human than the rest of us — 
and no less. And when the rest of us live by poli- 
tics, we sometimes have to do things we would 
hardly have the nerve to consult our Heavenly 
Father about before doing; and we do not believe 
Mr. Eoosevelt is any better than we are. For in- 
stance, we do not believe Mr. Roosevelt consulted 
the Throne of Grace before, in a "practical" sense, 
asking Mr. Harriman for that |250,000 to help 
out the Republican campaign in New York, just 
before election day, Avhen there were no more ex- 
penses for torch-light processions, public halls, 
public speakers and public booze. We do not 
know the very reason why Mr. Roosevelt asked 
Mr. Harriman for the money or anything about it 
or why he intimated that it was a "practical" prop- 
osition but we do not believe he wanted it spent to 
carry the true gospel to the East Side slums'. 
Again, we do not believe he sought divine guid- 
ance when he wrote the letter to a friend saying 
that a bright idea had struck him, or words to that 
effect; and that he thought it might pan out in 
popularity to take a crack at the corporations, 
"swollen fortunes," or something of the kind. 
We have forgotten the exact language, but it was 
going the rounds of the press sometime ago and 
those interested can look it up. Now, in all this, 
your Honors, Mr. Roosevelt has seemed to us like 
a very human sort of a politician. Even his thirst 
for the blood of "malefactors of great wealth" and 
"bad corporations" is only the ordinary political 
thirst for a campaign issue. He is arranging his 
political samples in his political shop-window and 
asking the public to purchase. If he has a bar- 
gain sale of dead "bad corporations" and dead 
"malefactors of groat wealth" and the public are 



153 

interested in that sort of goods, why, he will drive 
a thriving political business; but if they get tired 
of that line of goods, he will sit down, like any 
other shopkeeper, and think up a new line. He 
had just thought up a new line when he wrote to 
the friend the letter alluded to. People should get 
it out of their heads that Mr. Roosevelt is more 
of a saint or more of a sinner than any other 
human being. If we were in his business, we 
would do as be does — that is the most human of 
us; we would study out the thing the public 
wanted most, and the public would get it. Now 
as to this pursuit of "very rich men,'' "swollen 
fortunes," etc., it is simply a matter of politics. 
It is always right with oi poloi to curse out wealth. 
And it is just as popular to discover that Dis- 
honesty is running away with the country. But 
people are the same, yesterday, today, and 
forever.. The rich have we always with 
us; and the dishonest grow on every bush. They 
are no strangers. It is just as bad a speculation 
to be rich or to be dishonest now as it ever was, 
and no worse. But if Mr. Roosevelt, in his func- 
tion of office-seeker and all-round politician, can 
make the public believe that it was never risky 
either to be rich or to be dishonest until he came 
to town and that that has always been just what 
ails us; and that no rich or dishonest man was 
ever caught in the act until Mr. Roosevelt broke 
into the Presidency, why, your Honors, the gud- 
geons he thus catches are the reward of his 
angling, and who is kicking? But we do not see 
how the public can forget that the woods are full 
of hunters for Malefactors of Great Wealth and 
for Dishonesty, and that all you have to do is to 
pay your money and take your choice. Let us 



154 

understand that it is now and always has been 
only the common game of politicians to get after 
the rich and the dishonest, although it is a toss- 
up whether it is a case for politicians or the Pink- 
ertons, with the chances of a cleaner game on the 
side of the latter. Do we not all know how softly 
sweet sounds the tinkling of the word "reform?" 
And w^hat is that but a calling back to Poverty, 
Chastity, Honesty, and the public crib? Is there 
anything that reaches the public ear more quickly 
than the story that you have tried to save the dear 
public's dollars by catching the thief or making 
a rich man pay double taxes? 

Now would not any politician, Mr. Koosevelt 
or any other, naturally work the old vein as far 
as it would go? Well, that is just what he has 
been doing all along, no disgTace to him. For it 
is his trade; his business; and we ought not to 
make a demi-s^od or a great hero out of him for 
doing what all other politicians always have done 
and for the same purpose. The only difference 
between jNTr. Eoosevelt and some others is that he 
"takes the public into his confidence" somewhat 
mo-po generously — irlienever it suits Mm. For it 
does not alwnys suit him; and that fact proves 
that he is n politician pure and simple and does 
overvthins: for his own success and only inci- 
dental! y for the ffood of the public. He makes a 
loud cry when he runs down the Standard Oil 
roiin^auY that can brinq: no fish to his political 
in^t. mile^s ho kills it and holds up its* gory sc-^i^ 
io the pii1>1ie; but he does not even whisper to the 
In'o'hlA- interested public what he is doing by way 
of a German Agreement, even when it is going to 
break v^^ the business of thousands of our people 
and ln'ini>' nclnal sjarvatiou to large numbers. 



155 

He has his own reasons for being frank in the one 
case and the reverse in the other. He merely treats 
the public as a good thing to "work" in any way 
it pans out most. The people like to be flattered 
by being taken into the confidence of the Presi- 
dent; and they are lazy enough to like to believe 
that at last a man has been found who will "stand 
without hitching" and attend to the public busi- 
ness and let them nap. And, in this everlasting 
battle of wits, Mr. Eoosevelt is entitled, to let 
them, if they will, fool themselves into thinking 
he is but little lower than the angels; and he has 
been shi'ewd enough to understand human nature 
in tliese matters and to profit by it. But he is no 
saint, no superman, no demi-god. He is jiist a 
man, like the rest of us ; and none of us is yet suf- 
fering from cutting wings and the prick of the 
celestial pin-feathers. 

But there is one thing that puzzles us amaz- 
ingly and that is how the people could so soon 
have been fooled into thinking an ordinary stren- 
uous politician with a press-agency was the real 
thing, when he stepped out of an accidental vice- 
presidency into the shoes of the benign and refined 
:>rc'Kinley. With such a pattern for comparison, 
it beats our time how the public failed to see the 
differeuce between a real statesman, fully worthy 
to sit in the seat of Washington, Lincoln and 
Grant, and a politician pure and simple. Mr. 
]\rcKinley never raved up and down the land de- 
nouncing "very rich men" or "malefactors of great 
wealth" or made capital of his purpose to "control 
monopolies" or "supervise great wealth in busi- 
ness, especially in corporate form." Probably Mr. 
;>rcKinley knew he could not do any of these things 
and to pretend that he could, when he knew he 



156 ■ ' . 

could not deliver the goods, even to raise an altar 
for ineense-burning to himself, was far beneath a 
gentleman and a statesman of the McKinley type. 
But then Mr. McKinley was not a politician. 
But we repeat that what gets our wind is the fact 
that these two types, each perfect in itself, the 
perfect statesman and gentleman, and the perfect 
politician and trust-buster, should have stood off 
against each other in such strong relief and the 
public should not have noticed the difference be- 
tween them. That Mr. Roosevelt can make capi- 
tal by saying he is going to do things that can't 
be done under our Constitution puts us in a di- 
lemma: We must either believe he is so ignorant 
that he does not know he can't do these things, 
or thnt he is so much of a politician that he does 
not cfire whether he can or not as long as he gets 
the glorv which, for making the attempt, the igno- 
rant will cover him with. 

Whatever is said or thought about Mr. Roose- 
velt, there is one thing certain and that is he is 
a thorough success as a politician. He knows* 
human nature from the ground up. He knows 
liow to play on the fanaticism, the ignorance and 
the blind devotion of the multitude; and how to 
make the hopes and the fears of his fellow poli- 
ticians bring him the largest crop of points in 
the political game. For, whatever they think of 
him, however miK-h they hate him for his stren- 
uous handling" of their private rights, and how- 
ever much they curso liim in private, they follow 
him in public like little lambs. There is no doubt 
biit what ^Tr. Roosevelt has this influence by what 
some would call an unscrupulous use of the inci- 
dental power of his position as President; the 
power wliich his prestige as the highest Govern- 



15T 

ment official gives him, in the first instance, and, 
in the second, the actual power to use his govern- 
mental attributes to reward or punish those who 
either do or do not sit into his personal game. 
Of course, this conduct of his, pure Jacksonian 
as it is, is not only unjust but very much to be 
blamed from every point of view. And that he uses 
power in this way is pretty well attested by the 
fact that there are more people in Washington this 
moment who have had their sacred sense of jus- 
tice wounded by some freak of Mr. Roosevelt's 
than would be necessary, if all the facts were 
known and understood, to destroy forever the 
meteoric popularity which he now enjoys. And 
yet nobody dares speak; not because anybody is 
afraid of Mr. Roosevelt personally — there are 
thousands of as good men physically and men- 
tally in every city of any size — but because of this 
fortuitous power with which the Presidency has 
clothed him and with which he can do almost mor- 
tal harm to those who offend him. This is so 
much so that during the last i)residential cam- 
paigTi, when the country seemed aflame with en- 
thusiasm for Mr. Roosevelt, it was freely said in 
Washington, and among the politicians of the 
Republican party, that Mr, Roosevelt was a man 
for whom everybody was shouting and whom no- 
body wanted. 

Xow, your Honors, we have loyally accounted 
for Mr. Roosevelt's onslaught upon ^^monopolies," 
"great wealth in business, especially in corporate 
form,'' etc., etc., on the ground that ^Ir. Roosevelt 
is a simple and innocent politician, like all the rest 
of us in politics, just working an old, old vein for 
all it is worth ; just doing as old Andy Jackson did, 
when he clomb all over the banks and g^enerally set 



158 

the poor against the rich and basked in the lime^ 
li^ht of smis crdotte popularity. But there is an- 
other version of the matter from which we shrink 
with horror, considering our paternal interest in 
the President. There are those who see in Mr. 
Roosevelt more than the ordinary politician in the 
l)olitical sense. They see in him a politician with 
dreams far beyond those of avarice, mounting to 
the shining heights of despotic power, with the Lord 
only knows what a cloud-capped Olympian throne 
nt the top. These people say that it is not merely to 
get the sans culotte and the petroleum fiends on his 
side that causes him so fiercely to go for "malefac- 
tors of great wealth" and shut his eyes to our real 
criminal (4ass of the city slums. They say that 
1h^ should logically begin with the city slums in his 
reformation of the country's morals by butting into 
State affairs; because the slums give no bonds for 
c^ood behavior in the shape of "great wealth/' which 
keei)s its criminal owners anchored and reachable 
at any time, but the slums are flying light for prop- 
erty and may take the next steamer to Europe, be- 
yond the reach of the arrows of our presidential 
Jjomx Bow ; it is not alone for the voices and votes 
of populistic human souls — ^^although these are good 
property — which makes* Mr. Roosevelt "play to the 
i^alleries" and jam futile laws through Congress 
aimed at "great wealth in business, especially in 
corporate form," but that he really wishes to de- 
stroy the only force, viz., conservative wealth in 
harmonious movement, which stands in the way of 
bis vaultinc: ambitious. He wishes to dissolve our 
Standard Oil Oompanies, put all our railroads in 
terror of liis poAver and make them his allies, and 
tlieu go ouward and upward, ever upward to the 



159 

dizziest heights of iame ever i-eached by mortal 
foot. 

That is what some think. Others think this : 

It is true that there is no limit to Mr. Roosevelt's 
ambition. And there seems no limit to the elas- 
ticity of his' conscience when ambition is speeding 
his red-devil car. There is some plausibility, at 
least, in this belief that Mr. Roosevelt hates con- 
servative wealth, both because it offends his dignity 
and pride to feel that conservative wealth is even 
greater than he, the lionized hero of the populace, 
and because it stands in his way to greater things. 
Mr. Roosevelt is a man of but moderate fortune 
himself. He feels that he is Heaven's OAvn son in 
his Titanic popular role of the all-saver of his 
country's morals and that politics are only means 
to a Heaven-favored end. Therefore, away with 
everything that makes against him — away with 
'^malefactors of great wealth"; awmy with the Su- 
preme Court; away with the Constitution I What 
are these but worn-out tools of righteousness? And 
is not righteousness the great aim of government? 

Piqued pride at the thought that he is not quite 
supreme, and the hope of writing "my policies" 
large on American history, may well explain Mr. 
Roosevelt's unceasing pursuit of "great wealth." 
Wealth is congealed conservatism. It cannot mix 
with Rooseveltism. Therefore, out on the whole 
horrid heap of it! 

That there is a deep feeling among our most 
thoughtful citizens that Rooseveltism is all wrong 
crops out every now and then, in spite of the terror- 
ism which a terrorized press causes to paralyze pro- 
testing tongues. And some time ago, at New Ha- 
ven, Connecticut, at the annual banquet of the New 
Hjiven Economics Club, Mr. John W. Ailing had 



160 

his frank say. Mr. Ailing is one of the foremost 
lawyers in Connecticut; president of the New Ha- 
ven County Bar Association; president of a fire 
insurance company; a director in several banks; 
and president of the club above named. He sai(J 
this : 

" 'My policy,' not necessarily that of the Republican 
party, hut 'my policy,' for the carrying out of which 
*I am pledged during my term and shall see to it that 
my successor shall he a President who will also carry it 
out,' is that the Federal Government shall have and 
exercise the power to control, regulate and restrain large 
business wealth engaged in interstate commerce. 

"President Roosevelt is alone responsible for raising 
the railroad rate question. It was not a plank in the 
Republican platform. In the Senate it did not command 
a majority of the Republicans. In the Senate committee 
the Republicans and Democrats combined against it, 
and this Rooseveltian measure was intrusted to a Demo- 
crat, Senator Tillman. The overwhelming popularity of 
President Roosevelt jammed it through." 

Here Mr. Ailing is not quite correct. What 
jammed it through was the fear of Mr. Koosevelt'S 
press-agency which overawed Congressmen. We 
shall explain this press-agency later. Mr. Roose- 
velt's popularity is largely an artificial product of 
this press-agency. We read further : 

"Now what has been the result? From the instant 
it appeared likely that the power to fix rates was to be 
taken from the railroads and put into the hands of com- 
missioners in the interest of the shippers, commissioners 
every one of whom could be removed at once by Mr. 
Roosevelt," — 

Could Mr. Roosevelt have removed Judge Lan- 
(lis, your Honors, if Judge Landis had failed to 
''soak" the Standard Oil Company? 

"every one of whom could be removed at once by Mr. 
Roosevelt, the value of railroad properties began to de- 
cline and their credit to disappear. Railroads are obliged 
to stop improvements. Their power to raise the neces- 



161 

sary capital has vanished. The havoc wrought by this 
Roosevelt crusade against railroad capital runs up into 
the hillions of dollars. It affects hundreds of thousands 
of individuals, every savings bank, every benefit so- 
ciety, every fire or iife insurance company, and through 
these sources the whole community, and this so-called 
statesman, Presiaent Roosevelt, not content with the 
havoc already wrought, is determined that Congress shall 
further regulate, control, and restrain railroads. 

"President Roosevlt has shown himself bitterly hostile 
to large corporate wealth. His aim has been to break 
it up." 

Because he hates' what is bigger than he is, your 
Honors? Because it blocks the road to his ambi- 
tion's goal, your Honors? Or because, when he has 
busted its bronco back, he hopes to hitch it all to 
his chariot? 

"His aim has been to break it up. He has disdained 
all party policy in his grand, lofty way. It has always 
been 'my policy.' The constitution has not stood in his 
way. 

"This is not the statesmanship of a constitutional 
President. It is a revolution and a substitution of abso- 
lutism under a Presidential monarchy." 

"President Roosevelt has assumed that he is the 
United States Government. It is true he is immensely 
popular with the masses." 

The poor, unsuspecting masses, your Honors, 
who little know how they have been "worked" by 
the White House press-agency and the Cuckoo Me- 
lodens Rooseveltil 

"It is true he is immensely popular with the masses. 
So were the leaders of the old crusades against the un- 
speakable Turk. They did not do much harm to the Turk 
but they wrought untold misery on their blind followers. 
Mr. Roosevelt is essentially like those old crusade leaders, 
powerful, arrogant, conceited, with a halo of Heavenly in- 
spiration, a born leader bound by no party ties, himself 
the whole thing in searcn oi valiant deeds" — 



Your Honors', Mr. Ailing puts Mr. Koosevelt on 
a more dangerous footing than we have dared to do. 
It is lofty heroics which hurry Mr. Eoosevelt on his 



162 

intrepid way, and not sordid politics. But we will 
not take issue with Mr. Ailing. He may be right 
after all. 

—* 'himself tlie whole thing in search of valiant deeds, 
claiming a supernatural power to detect and uncover and 
punish the wealthy malefactor, followed, as he thinks, toy 
the whole people. ^.^ ^. , 

'*He is the most dangerous force to constitutional 
liberty that has ever existed in this country." 

These be hard words, your Honors, but has not 
Mr. Roosevelt brought them on himself? 

"He is the most dangerous force to constitutional 
liberty that has ever existed in this country. He has 
taken the press by the nape of the neck and to a great 
extent forced it to do his bidding," 

~ All too true, your Honors. And we admit that 
this is really a dangerous feature of the situation. 
The power of the press is almighty. And when a 
man chains the press to his obedient service, he 
comes pretty near being a troublesome proposition. 

"He has taken the press by the nape of the neck and 
to a great extent forced it to do his bidding. 

"Notoriously, President Eoosevelt does not respect the 
independence of the judiciary" — 

Too true, again, your Honors any more than he 
respects the independence of our law-makers in 
Congress. He terrorizes Congress as he terrorizes 
the newspapers, and plots' against the independence 
of the judiciary. Oh, Catiline! 

"President Eoosevelt does not respect the independence 
of the judiciary. In the great New York Circuit two of 
the three Judges of the Circuit Court of Appeals are of 
his appointment. His Attorney-General, a man after his 
own heart, was by him appointed to the Supreme Court 
of the United States. In the great circuit which em- 
braces Chicago, his District Attorney, Bethen, and Judge 
Kenesaw Mountain Landis are Rooseveltian. There is no 
accident in these appointments." 



163 

•: Your Honors, this, at least, is very interesting if 
true. Is it possible that Mr. Koosevelt appointed 
Kenesaw Mountain Landis, a professional politi- 
cian and devoted Eoosevelt retainer, judge in that 
circuit for the express purpose of slaughtering the 
^Standard Oil Company? Judge Landis's rulings 
were the astonishment of the judicial world, in that 
great case against the Standard Oil Company; 
and his sending for all the books of the 
company and finding out how much money 
it had and fixing the size of the fine ac- 
cordingly "staggered humanity'' — that is, 
judicial humanity. Was it that Mr. Roosevelt 
might have an obedient servant on the United 
States bench, up against whom, by preconcert, the 
poor old Standard Oil Company could be pushed to 
its certain condemnation and spoliation, that Mr. 
Landis w^as elevated from the ward politician to the 
Federal judiciary? These be questions which 
surely give us pause. And then, when you think 
of it, it seems a considerably more than barely 
possible that this is true. The case against the 
Standard Oil was not a rebate case. There had 
been no violation of anti-rebate legislation, and no 
such violation was charged. The question w^as 
merely as to the legality of a freight-rate. Judge 
Landis, as* if bent on carr-ying out a conspiracy to 
find the company guilty in any event, to increase 
Mr. Eoosevelt's popularity with the mob, would 
admit no proof that the six-cent rate had been filed 
by the Chicago & Eastern Illinois, and was there- 
fore a "legal rate"; that linseed oil, for instance, 
was carried at eight cents, and other bulky com- 
modities as low as five cents ; but, on the contrary, 
insisted that eighteen cents was the only legal rate 
for oil, when no one had ever paid it, and when it 



164 

was authoritatively sworn that it did not apply to 
oil. Moreover, Judge Landis refused to consider 
the fact that the rate on oil between Chicago and 
East St. Louis had been six cents' p^r hundred 
pounds for fourteen years, or from 1891 to 1905, 
which was an open published rate known to every 
one concerned in the shipment of oil and generally 
known in all railroad circles in Chicago. Both 
Chicago and East St. Louis being in Illinois, the 
railroad company was under no legal obligation to 
file this rate with the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
sion at Washington ; but Whiting, being in Indiana, 
shipments from Whiting to East St. Louis were, 
technically, interstate, and the Alton Kailroad filed 
with the Interstate Commerce Commission an ^'ap- 
plication sheet" applying to Whiting the Chicago 
rate, and in doing so thought the filing of the appli- 
cation sheet all that was required by law. All 
these little towns about Chicago have, for thirty 
years, b-een given the same rate as Chicago; and 
Whiting was practically a Chicago suburb. Fur- 
thermore, the Standard Oil Company was advised 
by the Kate Clerk of the Chicago & Alton that the 
six-cent rate, held criminal as against the Standard 
Oil, had been legalized by filing with the Interstate 
Commerce Commission. Still further, besides the 
Chicago & Alton, there were two other railroads 
over which the Standard Oil was shipping oil at the 
six-cent rate, legalized by regular filing with the 
Interstate Commerce Commission, one of these rail- 
roads being tlie Cliicago & Eastern Illinois and the 
other the Burlington ; therefore the defendant com- 
])any had no reason, for its own gain or for over- 
reacliing competitors, for sending oil at all by tlie 
Alton route. All these facts were known to Judge 
Landis, yet he went forward and "soaked" the 



165 

Standard Oil in a fine of |29,240,000 ! This looks- 
very much as if the conviction of the Standard Oil 
Company Avas foreordained, to help Mr. Eoosevelt 
''make good" to the rabble; and as if Judge Landis 
had been appointed to the bench to do just that job. 
Other things still make it look very dark for the 
President, and seem to establish the fact of a con- 
spiracy to destroy the Standard Oil, irrespective of 
the merits of the case. The principal of these facts 
are conn-ected with the opportune publication by 
Commissioner Smith of the Bureau of Corporations 
of his reports as to Pipe Lines and Petroleum 
Prices and Profits, the latter of which, as if to fire 
the public fury at the exorbitant profits alleged ro 
be earned by the Company, and to justify the enor- 
mous fine imposed by Judge Landis, was timed to 
appear and did appear only two days after the pub- 
lication of the Landis fine. 

Your Honors, this is a very serious business, in- 
deed. When you take into consideration the pre- 
vious destruction of the freedom of the press by the 
White House Cuckoo Kegime; the strangling of 
freedom of speech in Congress, also by White House 
pressure; this later public pillorying and prosecu- 
tion as an object lesson, before a Roosevelt ap- 
pointee who scorned every proof of innocence of- 
fered, of the greatest corporation in this country; 
the subsequent further pursuit of this same cor- 
poration, bombarded by destructive Federal reports 
opportunely published, into the Circuit Court for 
the Southern District of New York, whose action 
Avill be reviewable by a Federal Circuit Court of 
Appeals, two-thirds of the Judges in which are 
Roosevelt appointees — when all these things in 
close sequence are taken into consideration, it cer- 
tainly looks as if our judicial dice were loaded and 



1 m 

that no one but the lojai vassals of Mr. Roosevelt 
need apply for justice in any court controlled by 
him ; and as if there were a well-digested conspiracy 
at work to Roosevelt-revolutionize the whole coun- 
try to satisfy Mr. Roosevelt's ulterior purposes. 
And what can these purx)oses' be, your Honors? 
We are sure, your Honors, that the people of this 
country can be depended upon to right their boat 
after the gale. Conservative wealth, in which all 
share, must at last out-wind Roosevelt Populism. 
For Mr. Roosevelt is a populist in all his ways — a 
boss populist, not an ordinary, rank-and-file, foul- 
bearded populist. If you don't think so, just listen 
to the Kansas populists, now calling themselves 
^^Republicans," as they rattle the roof with their 
hand-clappings at Mr. Roosevelt's prowess against 
property. It is really very remindful of 
these very Populists and their antics in 
1896. But the good sense of the people 
will at last down Populism now as it did 
in 1896. In the meantime, however, who shall say 
what bees of ambition may not be buzzing in Mr. 
Roosevelt's bonnet. All these populists want Mr. 
Roosevelt for a third ter-m. It is true he waves 
back the crown, and says he will have none of it; 
but, protesting, he doth protest too much. Thrice 
did C?esar, protesting, wave back the crown. Is it 
not rational, your Honors, to suppose that a man 
who has had a head long enough to muzzle Con- 
gress, muzzle the press, and muzzle or "pack" the 
judiciary, carrying it even so far as the Supreme 
Court of the United States, according to Mr. Ailing 
— is it not rational to suppose that this was for 
some far-reaching purpose in which there was 
"something in it" for ^Ir. Roosevelt? It seems to 
us, your Honors, that to suppose anything else 



16T 

TN'ould be to suppose Mr. Roosevelt an idiot. And 
who supposes that, your Honors? 

But let us go back to Mr. Ailing and his remarks 
as' to the reconstitution of our Federal Courts for 
Mr. Roosevelt's "policies" : 

"There is no accident in these appointments. Presi- 
dent Roosevelt does not conceal that his object is to bring 
about such a judicial and final construction of the Federal 
Constitution as will give the United States power to regu- 
late, control, and restrain all the business wealth of this 
country, and clearly he expects to succeed by the educa- 
tional process of appointments." 

Your Honors, this is appalling, if true; for our 
liberties would be in danger. It is also appalling 
to think how popular clamor could possibly land 
in the White House a man of such low morality. 
Packing primaries is nowhere in wickedness com- 
pared with packing our courts for the reduction of 
the country's wealth to pay perpetual blackmail 
to the President. For that is all it would amount 
to. If all this is true, then, surely, the judicial 
mood is not a jewel found in Mr. Roosevelt's casket. 
If true, this proves many times' over what we have 
said about Mr. Roosevelt being a mere politician; 
and, we are sorry to say, not a politician of very 
elevated instincts, either. To pack the judiciary 
as you would pack a primary! To appoint to the 
bench men to decide hard and fast always in one 
direction, facts and law be hanged! Standard-Oil- 
Companyize all judicial decisions! Why, your 
Honors, where, for Lord's sake, in all this mucky 
muddle are we at ! 

Is it possible that this reduction of all our wealth 
to tribute-paying to the President is only a prepa- 
ration of the ground in which shall flourish the 
royal line of Roosevelt, with its fingers in the pock- 
ets of all the railroads and big corporations for- 



108 

ever? Why, Croker, and his Democratic Club, with 
his 20% rake-off on 170,000,000 of officeholders' 
salaries a year, would not be a circumstance for 
business sagacity. But isn't it reasonable? Other- 
wise, what is all this muzzling of press and Con- 
gress and judiciary for? They are certainly 
Croker strategics. 

But Mr. Ailing continues : 

"The secret of Mr. Roosevelt's character is a tre- 
mendous love of personal power. He is the most ar- 
bitrary, the most arrogant man in the Unites States." 

Oh, your Honors, gladly would we defend our 
President against this terrible arraignment! But 
the shades of the venerable Tyner, the brooding 
cruelty of Brownsville, the wanton wounds of a 
Long, the bruised and battered cliaracter of a Nich- 
olls, and the dumb suffering of the poor civil-service 
coachman, chill us that the tongue of our protest 
against such hard words doth cleave coldly to the 
roof of our mouth. 

But Mr, Ailing still plies the birch : 

"He thinks he can manage all business better than its 
owners can. Jack Cade, 500 years ago, promised the same. 
Even hell is paved with good promises and intentions.." 

Your Honors, the man who would pave hell when 
he could pave his own pockets is not in the Croker 
class, after all. 



"Three bilions of dollars is an awful price to pay as a 
first instalment to get rid of Theodore Roosevelt and 'My 
Policy.' It will take a long time to clear this matter up. 
But in the end we shall go back to the doctrines of our 
fathers that that government governs best which governs 
the least. * * * 

** Nobody can question the enormous effect of the uni- 
versal impairment and injury to our credit, bringing on 
the recent panic, or question the direct and cogent work 
of President Roosevelt in bringing on the general impair- 
ment of credit. 



169 

"There has been no financial scandal attaching to any of 
the 'wicked malefactors' about whose heads President 
Roosevelt has been brandishing his big stick. There have 
been only three large public scandals. The Consolidated 
Gas of New York, the life insurance companies and the 
traction system in New York. 

"In neither of these has President Roosevelt taken any 
part nor could he. Consolidated Gas has come out tri- 
umphant in the report of the master appointed by the 
court to ascertain the facts. I have no doubt of the re- 
sult of the pending trial, except that as I notice a new 
Rooseveltian Judge is to decide the case. 

"It is about three years ago in a stirring speech at 
Raleigh, N. C, that Mr. Roosevelt startled all thinking 
people by the proposition that the United States should 
regulate, control, and restrain the large business wealth 
engaged in interstate business. He has strenuously prod- 
ded the public, prodded Congress, prodded the judiciary 
up to this date, and it is the panic alone which has 
served to give us a rest. 

"In my judgment it has been *my policy' which has 
been the principal and direct cause in bringing on the 
panic." NEW YORK SUN, Nov. 1, 1907. 

Your Honors, we are morally certain that the 
woods are full of such birds as Mr. Ailing, only 
their voices are not heard. The circling Roosevelt 
liawk overhead, with his press-agency and Federal 
and Presidential thumb-screws, gives the whole 
chorus the hush. 

Now, your Honors, all this talk about Mr. Roose- 
velt would be of no relevancy in this argument, ex- 
cept for his close association with these wily plain- 
tiffs in their nefarious schemes against our client, 
American Production. It is' proven by abundant 
evidence, which we shall hereafter most clearly set 
forth, that Mr. Roosevelt, in spite of all his brave 
utterances in behalf of American labor, is and has 
been exchanging for various sorts of quid pro quo 
this sacred domestic market of ours, the life-blood 
of our whole people, its civilization and hope of 
heaven ; and that in so doing he is obeying the beck 
of these wily plaintiffs. 



170 



XVIII 

THE WILY PLAINTIFF^ THE IMPORTING TRUST^ 
STEADILY MISREPRESENTS THE TARIFF-DIKE AND 
CALLS IT THE OFFSPRING OF ^^CLASS LEGISLA- 
TION. 






Your Honors, this waj^ of attacking our tariff - 
dike is one of the oldest known to the Avily plain- 
titf, the Importing Trust. In your presence this 
morning, counsel for the Importing Trust made 
these walls ring ^round and ^round again with de- 
nunciations of Congress for ^'lending itself to 
sniall party politics and permitting the manufact- 
urers of this country to victimize the 'consumer.' '^ 
We have already slio^n you, your Honors, that 
there is no distinct class of "consumers" in this 
country, and that if any "consumer'' is paying a 
protected price for what he buys, he certainly is 
obtaining a protected price, a price twice as high 
as is paid b^^ any other people in the world, on 
Avhat lie sells, namely, his wage-production. We 
have only time to offer one or two examples of 
this form of tariff-dike attack as they appear in 
tlie newspapers of the Importing Trust from day 
to day. Here is one: 



"As Cromwell said that peace without a worm in it 
was impossible without righteousness, so prosperity can- 
not he without a taint unless it is founded on fair deal- 
ing and a justice as exact as human beings can make it. 
There is also such a thing as law-made prosperity. This 
can but rankle in the hearts of citizens. How can a 
prosperity be untainted which depends, for example, upon 
a needless tariff on steel rails or beams, put on and kept 
on only to swell fortunes already great? Here we see the 
political absurdity and moral contradiction of those who 
have admitted the gross injustice of the high tariff" — 



171 

It is the Importing Trust, your Honors, who 
has "admitted the gross injustice of the high 
tariff," and no one else — 

— **"but have said it must not be touched "because to 
do so would imperil prosperity. But it is those high 
duties themselves which imperil prosperity" — 

The prosperity of the wily plaintiff, the Import- 
ing Trust, your Honors — 

— ** since they make the people distrustful and dis- 
contented." 

"The people" are the members of the Importing 
Trust, your Honors. They are "distrustful and 
discontented" because the tariff-dike hinders their 
monopoly of our market here and gives the Ameri- 
can wage-producer somewhat of a chance with the 
wage-producer abroad to draw wages from our pro- 
ducing fund. But this Importing-Trust writer 
keeps on with his lingo : 

"Protectionist avarice is indeed a taint upon prosperity 
which long ago should have been removed. 

"A stand-pat Administration confessing that its fondly 
loved prosperity is stuffed with sawdust, is truly a moral 
spectacle. If Prosperity itself now has to be written 
down Tainted, all the equivocations and vacillations about 
the tariff, during the last six years, are verily nothing but 
vanity and vexation of spirit." 

In reading such things as this, your Honors, so 
full of falsehood, direct or indirect, so careless of 
the prosperity upon which hang the lives of mil- 
lions of our people ; nay, so anxious to belittle that 
prosperity, and make it seem to the wage-producer 
a burden instead of a blessing, all for the purpose 
of profiting by our misery, we come almost to favor 
the old belief in demons, rather than the idea that 
such cruel tricks are only the pestilent vapor from 
unhappy brain-cells. And yet, after all, your 



172 

Honors, there is consolation in the thought that 
they who do these wicked things are impelled 
thereto by their heritage of badly balanced brain- 
cells from the long past ages of savagery, and not 
from absolute will in this day and generation and 
in our present environment. 

Here is one more sample of this style of attack 
upon the tariff-dike: 

"Calhoun, if we remember, maintained that occa- 
sional periods of commercial depression and even panic 
were good for the country." 

How the Importing Trust, your Honors, breathes 
its prayer against the tariff -dike in every word of 
this ebullition ! It even preaches the healthfulness 
of panics; yes, your Honors, such panics as alwa3^s 
follow the breaking of the dike and the swamping 
of our industries in the deluge of foreign surplus 
products which overwhelms* us ! Was ever greater 
coldbloodedness than this shown by any other New 
York bunco-steerer ! The Importing Trust, the foul 
bird of prey, who pecks our eyes out one by one 
every now and then, preaching panic as a cure for 
sin — American panic which is the harvest home of 
the Importing Trust! A highway robber, your 
Honors', preaching to the victim whom he has 
robbed of all clothing the gospel of poverty and 
obedience and lauding the good effect of nakedness 
in hardening one's skin to the winter's blast ! Can 
we believe our eyes and ears, your Honors, when 
we see and hear such words from the monster who 
is to profit by our undoing! It wants our purses, 
our watches, and our clothing, your Honors, and 
solemnly sermonizes us on the holy chastening 
effect of hunger and nakedness! Was there ever 
such scientific knavery as this in all the world! 
But the Importing Trust preaches on ; 



173 

"They [panics] enabled us, he said, to take our bear- 
ings, politically; to see through false theories of gov- 
ernment. ' ' 

Tariff-dikes, your Honors, were the "false theories 
of government" — tariff-dikes which gave discomfort 
to the Importing Trust : 

**To expose charlatanism and return to sounder 
methods" — 

the sounder methods, your Honors, which exposed 
our naked high-cost market to capture by the Im- 
porting Trust. 

"In the moderate check to business which we have 
already experienced, some political good has been 
wrought. Belief in a magical tariff has been partly 
broken" — 

by the German Agreement, your Honors, by which 
an Importing-Trust Administration gave Germany 
the power to fix its own tariffs on goods entering 
our ports. 

' ' People have had glimpses of laws of trade and forces 
of nature too powerful for any politician or legislative 
contrivance. And they are prepared to go back more 
easily to the conception of government as something that 
should meddle with business as little as possible, and 
then only for reason shown." 

"The people'^ referred to in this extract, your 
Honors, Ave repeat, are the members of the Import- 
ing Trust, whose business is the destruction of our 
client, American Production. It is they who have 
luid "glimpses of laws of trade and forces of nature 
too powerful for any political or legislative contriv- 
ance." "The laws of trade" were the trickery and 
chicanery of German diplomacy by which the Ger- 
man Agreement Avas forced on our people. These 
things wore too poAverful for the "legislative con- 



174 

trivance'^ known as the American Constitution. It 
is these people who "are prepared to go back more 
easily to the conception of government as some- 
thing which should meddle as little as possible'' 
Avith their business, which is taking brokerages and 
commissions from the deluge of foreign surplus 
products rolling over our dike through the grievous 
rent made by the German Agreement. Yes, your 
Honors, these people are always ready to recognize 
such "laws" and such "natural forces" and to have 
such "conceptions of government." 

We have given these extracts, your Honors, as 
mere samples of those now swarming in Importing- 
Trust newspapers all over this great country, the 
sole purpose of w^hich is to discount the tariff-dike 
as our great bulwark against an industrial cata- 
clysm here ; and we warn you of the fact that these 
makers of public opinion are one and all paid by 
the Importing Trust to destroy American Produc- 
tion, that our arch enemy may rob our people of 
their savings. 

The Importing Trust, the wily plaintiff herein, 
deals in no ordinary trickery in deluding the Ameri- 
can people to their own undoing; but disguises its 
purpose in many ways. One of these ways is to 
control some newspaper ostensibly a believer in 
tariff-dikes and a supporter of the party which has 
usually held to the dike-building policy; and from 
such a newspaper, as from a masked battery, to dis- 
char2:e its broadsides against the forts of American 
Production. Through such newspapers as these 
it never "roots" for vulgar and barefaced Free 
Trade. It rather professes to like the idea of dik- 
ing out the flood of foreign products; and yet it 
rec:rets "the inequities" and "burdens" of a tariff- 
dike "too high"; an(l hints that perhaps somebody 



175 

is getting "an unfair adMintage" from so much pro- 
tection, and suggests that the dike might better be 
"revised" for the purpose of correcting "abuses'' 
and giving the "consumer" a better chance. This 
is the sapping and mining trick of the wily plain- 
tiff, the Importing Trust, which it employs be- 
cause, in these times, the connection between the 
Dingley Dike and American prosperity is so plain 
that to assault it openly would put the people on 
their guard. Here is a sample of the sapping and 
mining method of destroying the dike displayed in 
a Republican newspaper : 

* * * The tariff will not be touched during the coming ses- 
sion of Congress, and when it is touched it will he after 
a declaration in the next Republican convention and after 
the next inauguration.' SENATOR WARREN OF WYO- 
MING. 'Touched' implies the least possible revision from 
the Senators point of view. Meanwhile, are the people 
being 'touched' by the stand-pat interests?" 

Your Honors, this is perhaps the most perfidious 
thing of the kind in American journalism. This 
newspaper knows that there are no distinct "stand- 
pat interests'" in this country. The whole "stand- 
pat" interest is the whole of American Production, 
and from American Production every wage-pro- 
ducer, every property -producer, and every adjuncts 
producer in this country draws his life-blood. This 
paper knows as well as it knows its own name that 
to sweep away and keep swept away our tariff-dike 

would be to sweep away and keep swept away the 
nation, which is only a group of immigrants ready 
to leave this country on the same provocation 
which caused them to leave their former habitat. 
It knows that, with the dike down to stay, from this 
country at cost-100, every manufacturing dollar 
would gravitate in a decade out into the rest of the 
world and its cost-20. And yet it is one of the hire- 



176 

lings, or, rather, the personal chattels, of the Im- 
porting Trust, and its business is to feign Kepub- 
lican principles while undermining the tariff -dike. 
It knows that the general breaking up of the dike 
would be followed by the starvation to death of our 
wage-producers', the bankruptcy of our property- 
producers, and the paralysis of all our adjunct- 
producers, and that the land would be overrun with 
insurrection and bread-rioting, to the destruction 
of millions, aye, billions, of dollars worth of prop- 
erty belonging to innocent business men and thou- 
sands and thousands of lives; and it knows that 
the American people no sooner would have realized 
what they had done, than they would turn every 
stone to build anew the tariff-dike. But this creat- 
ure and chattel of the Importing Trust also knows 
that it takes several years to repair a tariff -dike; 
because, before they can hope for laws repairing 
the dike, the people have to await the expiration 
of presidential and congressional terms of office and 
the exorcising of the devils of the Importing Trust 
from the sick body politic of the country. It 
knows, that for several years the Importing Trust 
would be the King of American Trade, and, monop- 
olizing our entire domestic market, would absorb 
the whole savings-bank fund of our people, which 
being accomplished, the Importing Trust would be 
ready itself to assist in the building of the dike 
anew, in order that American savings might be 
dammed up behind it once more, and one day be 
worth snatching again by the Importing Trust 
after the same sort of a camijaign against the 
^^trusts-' which it is now carrying on for "revision.'^ 
Your Honors, to refer again to what counsel has 
said about tariff-dikes being "class legislation," no 
such thing as "class legislation'' is ever enacts by 



177 

Congress. Every law must be universal in its ap- 
plication. It can mark out no classes. There can 
be no ''favoritism," no laws which, ''rob the many 
for the enrichment of the few." This tariff -dike 
protects all alike, for it is that which prevents this 
country, as an industrial proposition, from being 
wiped from the face of the earth by a raving deluge 
of cost-20 products. The wily plaintiff, the Im- 
porting Trust, knows this better than any other one 
else on earth. Why, your Honors, the Importing 
Trust stands by us centuries long, for even the 
slightest opportunity to pocket the difference be- 
tween foreign cost-20 and our domestic cost-100; 
for, against every rule of wise statecraft, ay! 
against the simplest common sense, this arch- 
marauder of the centuries has always been allowed 
by our people to play blood-sucker to our industrial 
arteries, and is even now permitted to rush 
across our dike nearly two billions of 
dollars' worth of goods a year, every dol- 
lar's worth of which should be made by 
our wage-producers, to the raising of wages, the 
wider distribution of our wealth, and the refine- 
ment of our morals and civilization. And yet, 
knowing all these things, these wily plaintiffs often 
join in spreading the belief that the tariff -dike pro- 
tects "special interests," who secure in Washing- 
ton in their own private behalfs legislation in its 
benefits to them exactly proportioned to the size of 
the lobby for which they pay. We might inquire, 
your Honors, how large is that lobby which at 
Washington represents these wily plaintiffs and 
their attempt to destroy American Production for 
their own special profit. Our savings bank account 
now is nearly four billions of dollars; and our 
annual domestic transactions as shown by the 



178 

banks amount to one hundred and seventy thou- 
sands of millions of dollars. It is this entire sav- 
ings account and as many of our domestic transac- 
tions as they can appropriate to themselves 
which move these wily plaintiffs to maintain their 
own lobby at Washington, which, for unscrupulous- 
uess and richness in bribes is a Titan where other 
lobbies are Tom Thumbs. Does not this look rea- 
sonable, your Honors? 

To return the taunt as to "class legislation,'^ we 
declare that these wily plaintiffs' are demanding 
of Congress the most abominable kind of "class 
legislation." For the legislation they demand is 
the "revision" downwards of the tariff -dike, which 
would immediately divide the people of this country 
into two classes, viz., those who had money to 
profit by peddling foreign goods in our markets 
and those who had not. Those who had such 
money would be the masters of those who had not. 
Money would be everything; flesh and blood noth- 
ing; and workers v/ithout money would be so poor 
that their misery would sell them body and soul 
to the moneyed men for a mess of pottage. By 
lowering the dike you snatch from those without 
money to peddle foreign goods the only thing which 
makes them independent, the value in their labor. 
Truly, dike "revision" is "class legislation" of the 
wickedest kind. Truly, the high-tariff dike wipes 
out all "class" landmarks by making all alike inde- 
pendent in the value of their labor. Labor is then 
the coin of exchange, a coin which all may have. 
But lower the tariff -dike, and you dig a deep gulf 
between those with and those without money. 
Labor is no longer anything; money is everything; 
and those without money become the chattels of 
those with it. 



179 

But far on the other hand, we declare that tarifi- 
dike legislation is non-class legislation of the high- 
est kind. It makes labor tirst and money the ser- 
vant and not the master of the people ; and reduces 
the whole country to the common level of workers. 
Moreover, it is merely common justice and equity; 
for it goes on the principle that American w^age- 
producers should have in their own domestic mar- 
ket at least some chance with wage-producers 
abroad, who do not support our government and our 
lawns' and are not liable to serve in our army or navy 
for the defense of the country. 

As a final reply to counsel for plaintiffs uudc^i- 
this head, we simply point to the Dingley Law, en- 
acted July 24, 1897, which is the dike that for more 
than a decade now^ has kept out a portion, and a 
portion only, of the foreign deluge of surplus prod- 
ucts. An examination of this Law by people who 
believe in the square- jawed falsehood of the wily 
plaintiff will show that this "class legislation" em- 
braces provisions for every "class'' of producers in 
the United States, except those of kerosene oil, 
anthracite coal, cotton, undressed timber and per- 
haps a few other things called "raw materials." * 



* Since we are now importing something like $20,000,000 of 
raw cotton annually, the tariff -dike needs to be mended to shut 
out foreign cotton. It is said that when the Dingley Dike was 
under discussion, a committee representing our Southern cotton- 
growers appeared before the Ways and Means Committee of the 
House at Washington and made an appeal for the protection of 
cotton; but the appeal came to naught through the appearance 
of some New England cotton manufacturers before the same 
committee who represented that a tariff on raw cotton would be 
against their interests. These New England manufacturers 
were immediately afterwards found dead by the wayside and an 
examination showed that each had died from a wasting disease 
of the brain which had eaten away as with a cancer all the brain- 
cells in the organ of conscience. Had this dread disease not al- 
ready destroyed their sense of justice, they never would have 
had the courage to protest against protection to others when 
they were themselves protected. 



180 

Therefore, even granting for argument's* sake that 
it is '^class'' legislation, it is also nation(M legisla- 
tion, benefiting every producer and so every con- 
sumer within our gates; because the nation is but 
a composite of producing "classes," and when you 
have sheltered each class behind the tariff-dike, you 
have sheltered the whole nation. We do not forget, 
your Honors, that learned counsel for the prose- 
cution ponderously declared that those engaged in 
industries which can be at all benefited by "protec- 
tion" are so few in number and the burden of the 
"tax" upon all the rest who must remain unbene- 
fited is so great that the greatest good of the great- 
est number requires the "revision" of the dike 
downwards to a revenue level. But, as we have 
said before, those who are sheltered primarily by 
the dike are, without discrimination, our wage- 
producers and property-producers; and the whole 
country depends directly upon our wage-and-prop- 
erty-production. 



XIX. 

The w^ily plaintiff^ the importing trust^ is even 
attempting to cover with the veil of 
mystery the results of its machinations 
against the tariff dike^ which must soon 

EVENTUATE IN PANIC AND HARD TIMES FOR 0\j\\ 
PEOPLE. 

Your Honors, a few moments ago we read to you 
the words of various of the mouthpieces of the wily 
plaintiff, the Importing Trust, the purpose of which 
was to mislead our people as to the real source 
of the industrial and financial disaster which the 



181 

speakers scented in the distance. There is no 
doubt, Tour Honors, that sad times are just ahead 
of us but there is no ni^^-stery as to their source. 
There is no doubt, jour Honors, but the disaster 
will flow from breaches in the tariff -dike which 
for a decade, in various secret ways, have been 
making by the Importing Trust. For, your Hon- 
ors, this wily plaintiff never slumbers or sleeps, 
when by any subtlety Avhatever there is a possibility 
of working a crevice in our dike through which 
more foreign goods can trickle into this countrj^ 
and more commissions and brokerages into its 
strong box. It is because there is alread}^ a baby- 
inundation of our country by foreign goods at cost- 
20 that there is that anxious "feeling" in our busi- 
ness centres. It is too plain a case for mystery, 
your Honors. As we believe we have said before, 
business is simply demand being connected with 
supply; and as long as our whole domestic demand 
is connected exclusively with our home-made sup- 
ply, business must always keep a volume at least 
as great as our whole domestic demand. Our de- 
mand expresses our wants, and our wants are 
rather increasing than diminishing; and as long 
as we ourselves have the right to work and provide 
our own supply, and utter our demand by finding 
a market for what we produce ourselves, whether 
wages or property, goods and cash will pass back 
and forth over the counters of our merchants in 
unbroken torrents' and business will get rather bet- 
ter than w^orse. But if there is an escapage of our 
domestic demand to foreign fields of supply; if the 
opportunity which we give to others to work for us 
be not returned to us in an opportunity to work 
for others; if thus our means of exchange is takes 
away from us, the demand across the counters of 



182 

our business men ^\ili blacken in just the degree 
that our employment thus slackens; and then and 
only then shall we face a "practically certain re- 
cession in trade-' and realize that "we have ahead 
of us a period of smaller industrial totals." Yes, 
your Honors, as the power of our people to buy 
leaks away through our demand placed in the 
foreign cost-20 supply, the face of our prosperity 
will be averted and w^e shall soon hear that "rail- 
ways are curtailing expenditures/' "bankers are in- 
clined to exercise caution in extending accommoda- 
tions" and that "most manufacturers and mer- 
chants are planning their fall campaigns with much 
conservatism/' and there will be "little division of 
well-informed opinion" "that the period ahead of 
us is one in which commercial activities will be 
curtailed and manufacturers' totals show a de- 
crease." And the Importing Trust tells us that all 
this has happened ; but what a mystery it is to this 
wily plaintiff ! It is itself the very cat which swal- 
lowed the canary, but just listen to its plausible 
purr ! There is not a feather sticking to its teeth ; 
not a suspicion of blood on its velvet coat. And 
yet that canary, at this very moment, is in the cat's 
grateful stomach. If the cat is so reckless as to 
get caught in the act, or to confess' its theft, it will 
never get another chance at the country's canaries. 
Hence its bland ignorance of the true cause of the 
"practically certain recession in trade," which is 
that, through the ceaseless efforts of the wily plain- 
tiff, the Importing Trust, backed by the fact that 
foreign industrial growth and enterprise have 
largely discounted the height of the Dingley Dike, 
the balance of foreign trade is hundreds of millions 
against us annually, in spite of the pretense that 
it is $400,000,000 in our favor. 



183 

The report that comes to us from the United 
States Treasury, your Honors', purporting to tell 
us how much we have sold and bought abroad, does 
not tell the whole foreign-trade story. Because it 
is in figures and says nothing about quantities, upon 
which depends the power of foreign products to 
supplant American supply, that is, to cancel the 
need of the physical thing; a power unconnected 
with the money value of the goods. A Japanese 
brush, for instance, Japan being a cost-10 country, 
supplants a cost-100 brush made here, and so can- 
cels a 100-demand; but the Treasury figures only 
cover the Japan es'e brush at 10, and leave out of 
account 90 points of a 100-point loss in our do- 
mestic business. And going thus through the whole 
list of imports the total would be an average world- 
price of 20 instead of our price of 100. In other 
words, our imports would have had something like 
five times the American-demand-killing power of 
the figures given in our list of imports. But this 
is not the whole story of the deception contained in 
our Treasury report as to our foreign trade. Y^^ 
we export we are at the reverse disadvantage. Oiii 
exports* are figured in the list at cost-100, and their 
displacing power, pound for pound, is but one-fifth 
of 100 in a world whose costs are at 20. The high 
American price cuts too burly a figure compared 
with its effect in cancelling foreign demand; and 
our real trade is but an average of one-fifth as great 
as the figures show. In other words, when we buy 
in the world at large, the average destruction of 
American domestic demand, caused by paralyzing 
the American medium of exchange, otherwise the 
Avao-e-prodncer's opportunity to produce wages, is 
^Ye times as large as that shown by the Treasury 
figures, Avhile, on the other hand, the fis^ir-e cut bv 



184 

our exported' goods in supplying foreign demand is 
only one-fifth as great as appears by the Treasury 
figures. 

On the basis of this i^asoning, your Honors, let 
us do a little figuring ourselves : 

American imports annually, |1,500,- 

000,000, with displacing power in 

quantities five times as great, or. .|7,500,000,000 
American exports annually 2,000,000,000 



Loss to American business |5,500,000,000 

Here is a nominal loss of |5,500,000,000, in de- 
mands which should have gone to American Pro- 
duction and should have shown in the records of 
our property-producers. 

But this does not tell the whole story either, 
your Honors. A single opportunity offered 
American Production is the starting of a 
whole procession of opportunities which other- 
wise would not have come into play. Did you 
ever observe, your Honors, how a single trolley 
car off the track blocks a procession of a hundred 
trolley cars on Broadway? It is something that 
way with an opportunity which has gotten off the 
track through a demand for a given supply hav- 
ing gone off the track into the hands of the Im- 
porting Trust. It blocks the procession. There- 
fore, when you say that our business is |5,500,- 
000,000 worse off in a year by the activity of the 
Importing Trust, you have not begun to put in 
figures the actual loss to the country. Our annual 
domestic business, as shown by our banks, as we 
have said before, covers something like one hun- 
dred and seventy thousand millions' of dollars of 
exchanges, while our nctunl production of goods 



185 

in the same time is but a fraction as large. This 
shows that production is the good old hen of oppor- 
tunity which lays a nest full of eggs and hatches 
chickens enough in a short time to make a whole 
regiment of hens. 

There is no doubt, your Honors, that this reason- 
ing comes pretty close to the real truth as to why 
"we are facing a practically certain recession in 
trade;'' why "bankers are inclined to exercise 
caution in extending accomodations;" and why 
"most manufacturers and merchants are planning 
their fall campaigns with much conservatism," 
If our figures' are only half true — and we believe 
they are wholly true — what a terrible destruction, 
your Honors, through our upward-bounding for- 
eign imports, is going on among our sources of 
w^ealth. Think of it, your Honors! What a wan- 
ton thing is this wily plaintiff, the Importing 
Trust! To land a single dollar's w^orth of goods 
in this country, it kills a corresponding domestic 
demand equal to |5! We repeat it, your Honors, 
supply is the measure of demand; for to offer a 
supply is to demand its' equivalent in exchange. 
Kill the cause for an American supply by a dollar's 
worth of foreign goods, and you have killed |5 of 
American supply, that is, |5 of American demand, 
which is |5 of American business. This killing 
of American business at the rate of |5 of domestic 
business for every $1 of foreign imports is going 
on at a reckless and ever-increasing rate ; and this 
alone, were there in fact a trade balance such as 
the Treasury reports' show, would be enough to 
do all the things in the direction of a "practically 
certain recession in trade" which our Importing- 
Trust orator says are happening in such a mysteri- 
ous wav. 



186 

But the Treasury reports do not tell the whole 
story. They merely give arbitrary balances shown 
by the exchange of the goods, and do not touch 
matters incidental to foreign trade, which wipe 
out the credit balance and leave a heavy debit 
balance instead. Let us* figure a little, your 
Honors, and see if we cannot bring some honest 
common sense into the method of keeping the 
country's accounts relating to foreign trade: 

Favorable balance of trade as shown by 
the Treasury figures $400,000,000 

Freights paid by American to foreign 
ships $300,000,000 

Expenses of American tourists abroad, 100,000,000 

Immigrants' remittances to old folks 
at home 100,000,000 * 

Interests and dividends on American 
securities 200,000,000 

Undervaluations of imports ' 100,000,000 

Smuggled goods 100,000,000 900,000,00 

Actual balance of trade against the 
United States $500,000,000 

Your Honors, we verily believe that, without 
reference to the incalculable injury wrought from 
the cancellation by every unit of import of five 
units of the American demand upon our business 
nieii, the actual cash balance of trade against us 
is upwards of 1500,000,000 a year at this moment ; 
and to this for the future must be added $100,000,- 
000 more at least because of the increased under- 
valuations permitted by the German Agreement, 
and from |50,000,000 to flOO,000,000 still more, 
because of the premium upon smuggling lately 
offered by our German Administration through 
a Treasury order which makes perjury on the part 



^'To this should be added the money taken out of the country 
every fall by the eastward migration of Italian, Hungarian and 
other workers, who spend the winter in the old country. 



18T 

of the traveler the only thing between him and 
the profits of a trunk full of smuggled goods. 

Your Honors, in this state of things with re- 
gard to our foreign trade, we have the seeds of a 
national disaster of great proportions. The tariff- 
dike, as jou see, is being made powerless to pre- 
vent the cancellation of our domestic demand at 
the ratio of 5 to 1, that is |5 of American home 
business cancelled for every dollar's worth of for- 
eign goods imported. There is a growing trouble 
in the "feeling" of the country. Confidence is 
oozing away because the underpinning of confi- 
dence, the certainty of |1.05 coming back for every 
1 1 expended in American production, has been and 
is* being kicked away by the trickery of the wily 
plaintiff, the Importing Trust. But mark, your 
Honors : This trouble is coming on because we 
have no sufficient dike to dam out foreign cancella- 
tions of our domestic demand, foreign malicious 
animal magnetism, which changes into dross our 
domestic coin of exchange, wage-production. 

And yet, your Honors, the wily plaintiff is even 
now beginning to instruct its newspapers and 
orators to say the trouble comes from "the hin- 
drances to foreign trade imposed by the robber 
tariff!" Pointing at our failing business to jus- 
tify its declaration, it will gibe and sneer and jeer 
at the tariff -dike as unable to make prosperity; 
and at the same time raise a din for "revision," 
in order to "remvwe the shackles from the sturdy 
young limbs of the great American giant of in- 
dustry." And it is quite likely it will succeed, 
as it has done so many times before, from the lap- 
ses of the national memory, or, rather, the total 
absence of a national memory. Then, what will 
follow? Just what has followed so manv times 



188 

before: Before the dike is discounted by ad- 
vanced foreign methods of production, and before 
the Importing Trust has picked it too full of holes, 
the season of prosperity will have filled our prop- 
erty-producers so full of the belief that each dol- 
lar they put out in material and labor will come 
back, say, |1.05 in the price of their finished 
product, that large numb-ers of them will have run 
into debt to increase their business. Some will 
have put up as collateral to their borrowings vari- 
ous securities which were earning good dividends 
and paying good interest. Others will have mort- 
gaged real estate. And some will have been 
fortunate enough to get loans for stock in the cor- 
porations of which they are the moving spirits. 
In all possible ways' these people will have given 
security to money-lenders. Now so long as there 
is a bottom in the country's bucket, so long as it 
will hold the fluid of American demand, which buys 
their g^ods and leaves' them a profit, their credi- 
tors will not hesitate to extend their notes and 
even slis^htly to increase their loans. The coun 
try seems solid as oak and everything goes s'wim- 
minglv. But now the dike has sprung aleak 
throu2:h the hammer and crow-bar of the wily 
plaintiff; and it begins to be hammered by a lot 
of the hirelings of the wily plaintiff, the Import- 
ino: Trust, who get paid in proportion to their zeal 
and the wei^^iit of their blows; and soon a lot of 
bo^bv babblens among the w^ould-be-intellectuals 
of the countrv also take up hammers and bars 
against the dike; then the "raw material" fiends 
join the orang; then the politicians wake up and 
trv their hand also; then a lot of members of the 
Manufact^irers' Association, with mole-eyes and 
gormand bellies', swell the music; and it ends by 



189 

half the country being hypnotized into believing that 
the dreadful high-tariff-dike, already as good as 
none at all because gushing foreign goods at every 
joint, is the source of all the stringency of money 
conditions really arising from the leaking dike; 
and finally, instead of mending the dike like sen- 
sible people and putting a couple of additional 
stories on it to equalize late foreign economies 
in production, the whole swarm of sap-heads 
makes a dead rush at it and levels to the sea-bot- 
tom the already tottering dike. Then in breaks 
the foreign deluge with hungry fury. Mill after 
mill closes'. Furnace after furnace puts out its 
fires. Concern after concern cuts down its work- 
ing forces; and swarm after swarm of wage-pro- 
ducers is turned idle on the streets to live in- 
definitely on charity or their savings'. Well, a 
mill that^s dead is no good security; and securi- 
ties that depend upon the earnings of such a mill 
are no good collateral. The pay-roll has taken 
about all the loose cash the mill-owner had when 
he paid off his men and let them go. But the 
interest on his large note is coming due. He hus- 
tles around to borrow on what other security he 
can offer. Money-lenders wont take it. It is per- 
haps a mortgage he holds on some employe's house. 
But the employe is out of work now, and the mill 
is closed and perhaps' the house will be worth 
nothing as a worker's home; because the mill may 
never open and the workers may be scattered for 
good and all. Who know^s? At any rate the 
lender will not accept the mortgage as security. 
Then the mill-owner offers, perhaps, some rail- 
road stock. But, no, the lender says that, because 
its freight-earnings had dwindled so and, over a 
large part of it, the passenger traffic had entirely 



190 

failed, especially where it had depended on any of 
the clos^ed mills along the route, within a month 
after the dike was busted, the road passed its divi- 
dend and went into the hands of a receiver. Well, 
nothing the mill-owner offers will satisfy the 
lender. His interest falls due and he cannot meet 
it. His creditor is himself a debtor. He also 
has notes to pay and he has depended upon the 
interest from the mill-owner's notes to pay them; 
and he must save himself as he can. He rushes 
into court and gets judgment against the mill- 
owner; and the sheriff levies on the mill and all 
its contents of unsold goods. There is a sale. 
The property, real and personal, is sold out under 
the hammer. The mill-owner is ruined. The re- 
sults of a lifetime of hard work have been swept 
away. And very likely the mill-owner commits 
suicide. This is what happens in thousands 'of 
cases. Every man who owes money is in danger 
of being sold out, and, to save himself, rushes to 
those who owe him money and compels payment. 
This keeps up until thousands of failures occur 
every day and the country is swept by a cyclone 
of panic. Wall Street has already fallen with a 
crash. The cockle-shell of speculation was crushed 
by the shock which knocked values out of the 
money-earning collateral it relied on; because 
by the destruction of the dike and the in-rush 
of cost-20 goods to supplant cost-100 goods, money- 
earning was cut out of the enterpris'es which is- 
sued the securities. This is the plainest matter 
in the world, your Honors. We cannot believe 
the wily plaintiff's counsel are talking in good 
faith, when they affect not to know the reason 
of these panics; when they say that they come 
aronnrl about once in eleven years and are be- 



191 

lieved to be more or le^^H connected with the sun- 
spots; or that they come because of "short crops;" 
or "scarcity of money;" or "over-production;" or 
the "corner in gold;" or the "exactions of the 
trusts," who sell abroad at lower prices than at 
home. These wily counselors to the wily plain- 
tiff do not call attention to the fact that the 
panic immediately followed the smashing of the 
dike and that the country was already in the 
Slough of Despond before anybody thought to lay 
it to any of these things. 

Could it be "over-production," your Honors, 
when the demand of our people would require 
all the goods on hand and more, if, by the smash- 
ing of the dike, they only had not lost their jobs 
and their wherewithal to buy? At any rate, your 
Honors, is over-production such a bad thing, when 
people are sure of their jobs at any rate; even if 
now and then they do take a day or two off and 
wait for consumption to catch up with demand? 
For, your Honors', people who believe this over- 
production yarn seem not to realize what a tre- 
mendous mountain of goods is swept out of our 
markets by the demand of a single well-paid wage- 
producing day in this country. Why, your Honors, 
rebuild the dike, shut out foreign supplies, and 
every particle of American goods, no matter how^ 
much, could be swept out of our markets in a 
single month by our own demand ; and from "hard 
times" we would jump instantly over our heads 
into the tall grass of good times. But, your 
Honors, instead of only a little month, these 
hard times which they say come from "over-pro- 
duction" last years long, when the dike is down; 
and don't you think it looks as if the Importing 



1^2 

Trust and its profits were at tlie bottom of this 
little falsehood about "over-production." 

Furthermore, your Honors, could there be "over- 
production" of more than a few hands full of goods? 
Do people produce goods just for the fun of it; 
or do they produce them to sell? And if they 
found their goods would not sell, would not they 
just stop producing a little while, until there was 
a demand for them, instead of keeping on day 
after day, and week after week, and month after 
month, "over-producing," that is, putting their 
money into materials and labor, only to let the 
goods lie in their warehouses to become moth- 
eaten or to rust out? "Over-production," your 
Honors*, belies the intelligence of producers. And 
especially is this talk of "over-production" very 
weak when it applies to the producers of a whole 
great country like our». It means, that all of the 
producers at once Avere seized with a sort of lunacy 
for hazard-spiel, for, making up masses of capital 
into goods for which there was no sale and per- 
haps not likely to be. 

No, your Honors, this "over-production" talk 
does not bridge the chasm. It does not wash. 
But, your Honors, we think we see what the 
wily plaintiff means* by "over-production" with 
regard to our industries. It is simply any 
American production at all when the dike is 
down. At such times our market belongs to the 
Importing Trust and it is mere impudence for 
an American property-producer to try for any of 
it. We think we see that sort of over-production 
in sight now. We think we see why, to revert to 
the language of our Importing-Trust orator re- 
ferred to a few moments ago, "most manufacturers 
and merchants are planning their fall campaigns 



193 

with much conservatism;" and why, "there is 
really little division of well-informed opinion 
that the period ahead of us is one in which com- 
mercial activities will be curtailed and manu- 
facturers' totals show a decrease.'^ And we have 
only to go to the columns of an Importing Trust 
newspaper of the "revisionist" Kepublican type 
for the explanation. In this paper one item reads 
like this: 

"Despite the opening of the fall season the pig iron 
market continues stagnant. It appears absolutely im- 
possible to dispose of pig iron except in very smaU 
quantities and then only in cases of emergency." 

This quotation is upon one page of the paper. 
We turn to another page of the same issue of 

the same paper and find an item headed "Our 
Chief Imports by Quantities;" and among these 
imports' we find there were 564,846 tons of pig 
iron imported into this country in this fiscal 
year 1907 as against 23,316 tons of the same ar- 
ticle imported into this country during the fiscal 
year 1899. We think that an increase of over 
2400% in the imports of pig iron in eight years 
is a sufficient cause for the sentence, "Despite the 
opening of the fall season, the pig iron market 
continues stagnant." We think there has been an 
"over-production" of pig iron abroad for our mar- 
ket here. W^hen there is trouble anywhere in 
France, the Frenchman says "Cherchez la femme!" 
But when there is any "stagnation" or decay any- 
where in our business fabric, Cherchez la — leak in 
the dike! The leak this time is in the tariff on 
pig iron. 

Again, in the same paper, we find this item : 

"The faUing prices of copper will very soon have 
an appreciable effect on the mining industry of Butte 



194 

ana the copper output, for a low price of the metal will 
lorce many lessees and small mining companies to quit 
operations." 



And in another part of the same issue of the 
same paper we find the statement that, whereas 
in 1899 the Importing Trust brought into this 
country 10,292 tons of copper ore and 39,812,667 
pounds of pig copper, in the fiscal year 1907 the 
same Importing Trust brought into our market 
278,488 tons of copper ore, and 198,442,715 pounds 
of pig copper. We rather think than an increase 
in eight years of 2700% in our imports of copper 
ore and 400% in our imports of pig copper will 
be the cause which "will force many lessees and 
small mining companies to quit operations;" and 
we are quite willing to grant that "over-produc- 
tion" is the thing to blame; but "over-production" 
of foreign copper and not "over-production" of 
American copper for our market. 

Your Honors, looking over this list, "Our Chief 
Imports by Quantities," just referred to, we would 
not be surprised if there were various other items 
which would soon suffer from the same sort of 
"over-production" which is threatening so seriously 
to affect copper and iron. For example, we note 
that the importation of lemons has increas'ed by 
over fifty millions of dozens annually since 1899. 
This looks like a serious and soon "over-produc- 
tion" on the part of our lemon-growers in Cali- 
fornia. 

Also cotton cloths appear to be in a fair way 
to be "over-produced" in the quite near future; 
since annual imports of the same have increased 
by some thirty millions of square yards since 
1899. 

Furthermore, we are annually importing some 



195 

fifty-odd millions of pounds of raw cotton more 
than eight years ago; some twenty million square 
yards of w^oolen dress-goods, some twenty-two 
million pounds of cheese, some twenty-two million 
pounds of leaf tobacco, some three million pounds 
of wrapper tobacco, some million and a quarter 
pounds of woolen cloths', some one hundred and 
fifty thousand dozens of bottles of champagne, 
some two hundred and twenty- thousand tons of 
nitrate of soda, and some one hundred and eighty 
thousand tons of wood pulp, more than we im- 
ported eight years ago; and we would not be at 
all surprised to discover by the end of the year 
that we were charged by the Importing Trust with 
serious ^^over-production" in all these directions. 
At any rate, your Honors, imports in all these 
things are rapidly increasing to compete with our 
own farms and factories; and, contrary to pru- 
dent statesmanship and to natural justice, the in- 
crease in wages which would respond to the ad- 
ditional employment of our own wage-producers, 
in making these goods now imported, is being de- 
nied our workers. The dike is already leaking 
badly enough in all conscience Avithout any "re- 
vision." 

Your Honors, with almost inexhaustible sup- 
plies of copper in our own mines, the Import- 
ing Trust bids fair before many years to handle 
most of our copper through its commission houses'; 
and for the simple reason that there is no tariff - 
dike against copper in any of its unworked forms. 
And in spite of a tariff of 40c a ton on iron ore 
and |4 on pig iron the importation of pig iron has 
rolled over twenty-four times in eight years and 
is still rolling; while imports of copper ore, with- 
out a tariff, were rolling over twenty-seven times! 



196 

We observe, your Honors, that wool is in some- 
thing of the same sort of a fix as copper and iron. 
In eight years the Importing Trust has increased 
its commissions from this source by increasing 
from 77,000,000 pounds to 204,000,000 pounds its 
annual sales of foreign wool in this market. 
Again, with regard to this article, we have bound- 
less territory good for nothing but wool-raising; 
while a defective tariff dike has caused imports 
of wool to roll over nearly three times in eight 
years. We obs'erve that "over-production" of wool 
is very close at hand for the American farmer. 
Evidently the tariff-dike needs no "revision" to 
assist the country to "cheaper" wool. 

In passing, we remark one thing, your Honors: 
With one of its mouths', the Importing Trust says 
we need no tariff dike, because our "inexhaust- 
ible supplies of raw materials." in which we 
"stand without a peer," coupled with our "invent- 
ive genius" in making machinery, assure us for 
all time lower costs than can be reached elsewhere. 
And yet, your Honors, in spite of the tariff-dike, 
iron, copper and wool, came surging in here in 
irresistible billows? Why is this, your Honors? 
If our "raw materials" are so abundant that we can- 
not be beaten in price, why do foreign "raw 
materials" come pouring across the water and over 
the top of our dike? If we had no dike at all, as 
the Importing Trust wishes, would these "raw 
materials" stop coming over? Is it the dike that 
makes them come, your Honors? If it is, why 
does the Importing Trust want the dike taken 
down? Doesn't it want any commissions on "raw 
materials?" Doesn't it want "over-production'' 
in these things, too; "over-production" by foreign 
producers for American markets? But if it is hon- 



197 

est when it says' ^Ve can't be beat'' in cheapness 
because of our ''unexampled supplies of raw ma- 
terial" and "unequalled genius for doing things 
on a great scale," why does it want the dike down 
on "raw materials?" If the Importing Trust can't 
beat us any way, because of our "unexampled 
supplies" and "unequalled genius," what harm 
does the dike do if it stands? If it were down, 
these "raw materials" couldn't get in here, could 
they, if we have such "unexampled supplies" and 
"unequalled genius'?" 

But this wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust is 
very funny, your Honors. We have just told you 
why it says we "can't be beat" — it is "unexampled 
supplies" and "unequalled genius" that take the 
trick. We have both bowers and the joker. But 
with another of its' mouths, the wily plaintiff says 
we ought to "let raw materials come in free, so 
our manufacturers can get them cheaper, work 
them up into goods, cheaper, at any rate, than 
they would be if American "raw materials" were 
used, and send them abroad to "conquer the mar- 
kets of the world," thus "giving more work to 
our manufacturers and higher wages to their em- 
ployes." Isn't this very funny? Our "raw ma- 
terials" are so cheap by nature that nobody can 
get them so cheap; but our "raw materials" are 
so dear by nature that unless our manufacturers 
get foreign raw materials they can't get the big 
bird in the bush of a market abroad. 

The confusion of the Importing Trust prophets 
upon this subject of raw materials, your Honors, 
is a conclusive proof of the bad faith in which they 
carry on their warfare against our client, the de- 
fendant, American Production. This confusion 
is so great, even in the same mind, that from one 



198 

side of his mouth an importing Trust minion will 
say that we beat the earth in all sorts of raw 
materials, and from the other that w^e are very 
defective in this regard. To clinch our statement 
we cannot forbear citing an example of this con- 
fusion. Here we have a New York Free Trade 
newspaper, notoriously pro-British in its man- 
agement, under date of September 23, 1907, say- 
ing this with regard to our I'aw materials: 

"It may help to put a better face upon the facts if 
we regard these importations as the remedy — the ac- 
customed remedy, in fact — for the chief cause of our 
industrial check. Every authority agrees that we have 
suffered from deficiency of capital. Here is the proof 
that we are remedying the deficiency at an unexampled 
rate, and yet there is general dismay." 

This article, your Honors, was one attempting 
to quiet the fears of our business men awakened 
by our greatly increased imports, which threat- 
ened soon to leave a trade balance against us. 

— "and yet there is general dismay. It can only re- 
sult from the confusion of thought which regards capi- 
tal as exclusively gold, or as bank credits. In fact the 
deficiency in those forms of capital is the least import- 
ant part of our present deficiency of capital. WE 
HAVE LACKED PARTICULARLY EVERY FORM OF 
RAW ]MATERXAL. There was a shortage a few months 
ago of copper metal, but its importation swelled the fig- 
ures under discussion and helped to revive the consump- 
tion of copper through the reduction in price which re- 
sulted from the accumulation of stocks." 

Please observe, your Honors, that while this 
creature of the Importing Trust is trying to 
quiet our fears with regard to our growing 
imports, it smooths the matter over by 
saying, "We have lacked particularly every 
form of raw material." Now, in another 
part of the same paper, in making an assault on 
our tariff -dike, which prevents its British masters' 



199 

from destroying American industries, wishing to 
show that we really have no need of the dike, it 
says : 

"But as pointed ont by Governor Folk, the economic 
vice of the protective tariff is not less conspicuous than 
its violation of equity. Here we are a Nation with im- 
mense resources which we are developing with steady 
determination and energy with the announced purpose of 
taking a great part, if possible a dominant part, in the 
commerce of the world. And we keep in operation a 
system of obstruction and restriction of commerce of the 
most rigid, complex, vexatious, and costly character. IF 
IT WERE NOT FOR OUR EXTRAORDINARY NAT- 
URAL ADVANTAGES, THE IMMENSE RANGE AND 
VARIETY OF THE PRODUCTS OF OUR SOIL AND 
OUR MINES, and the unfailing stream of immigration 
from our earliest days as a nation, we never could have 
stood our own efforts to impede trade. Sooner or later 
the reversal of this absurd policy, the emancipation of 
our commerce, is bound to be a dominant issue in our 
politics, and it may be sooner rather than later." 

Here, in the same Importing Trust newspaper, 
in immediately contiguous columns, we have the 
statement on the one hand that we have been and 
are importing very heavily because we have "lacked 
raw material in every form" and on the other hand 
that we have "impeded trade'^ with our dike and 
all that has saved us from sorrow is an "immense 
range and variety of products of our soil and 
mines.'^ To justify increasing imports, we are 
lacking in raw materials and they are flowing in 
as if we had no dike. To justify a wholesale 
damnation of the troublesome tariff -dike, we have 
raw materials in great abundance, which save us 
from ruin. In each case, it will be noticed, how- 
ever, the writer had the same object, the destruc- 
tion of the dike, in the faithful and true service 
of the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, and all 
its cruel designs against the homes of American 
wage-producers'. But this is not all we find in this 
same issue of the same paper. We have a com- 



200 

munication printed there from a New York Cleve- 
land Democrat and a notorious Free Trader, in 
which occurs the following language: 

**In this praise of Mr. Whitney's speeches, which I 
share with your editorial of to-day [Sept. 20], I would 
make one qualification. The census returns of 1900 and 
the Bulletins of the Bureau of Statistics which "bring 
these down to date, afford sufficient material to enable 
us clearly to see that the principal raw materials, such 
as iron ores, coal, lumber, and hides, should at once be 
put on the free list, and that it should be immediately 
enacted that no duty except in the case of wine, spirits, 
and tobacco, should exceed 50 per cent. With these two 
immediate reforms, we could go about tariff revision 
somewhat on the lines suggested by Mr. Whitney [Demo- 
cratic candidate for Governor of Massachusetts], through 
the medium of an intelligent commission, without serious 
derangement to business and to the great and lasting 
benefit cf the whole country." 

We have already read to you, your Honors, the 
words of a celebrated Importing Trust orator and 
author who says "we have combined with the ad- 
vantage of unexampled supplies of rate material 
an unequalled genius for doing things on a great 
scale." 

It is too plain for dispute that what all these 
people are after is not American prosperity, but 
the prosperity of the wily plaintiffs herein. 

These Importing Trust advocates should get to- 
gether and settle upon a uniform falsehood, and 
see what they can do towards proving that a lie 
well stuck to is as good as the truth. For, if they 
keep on telling opposite lies for the same purpose 
they may be charged with inconsistency. You will 
remember that one of our doctors said that Eng- 
land had fallen behind to the third place in inter- 
national commerce, while the United States had 
gone to first place and Germany had pulled her- 
self up to second. But we have just heard another 
doctor s'ay that we have "impeded trade" by our 



201 

tariff dike. If great "we" have impeded trade by 
a tariff dike, what must have happened to little 
Germany, with a dike worse than ours. But Ger- 
many has been so "imped-ed" by her dike that she 
has beaten England w^ho has no dike ; and we have 
been so "impeded" thereby that we have gone clean 
to the head of the class. 

But let us return to the various' subterfuges 
which the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, em- 
ploys to hide the havoc which always follows dike 
"revision" downward. 

As it is with "over-production," your Honors, so 
it is with "scarcity of money," given as' a reason for 
hard times after the dike has been "revised." 
Mon-ey is then scarce to invest in American produc- 
tion or business of any kind, except that of the wily 
plaintiff, the Importing Trust. Because there is no 
chance for any American business to succeed at 
cost-100 while the country is being inundated with 
all forms of cost-20 goods. No money-lender can 
see any security in a mortirage on an American mill, 
while the wheels' of the mill are silent and its chim- 
ney smokeless, with no assurance in sight as to 
wh-en the mill will start again. And when rail- 
roads are in the hands of receivers, as they were in 
the Cleveland low^dike era, between 1893 and 1896, 
neither their stock nor their bonds are considered 
the l>est of security by the "malefactors of great 
wealth" who otherwise would advance the where- 
Avithal. That condition, when the dike is busted 
and the times are hard, accounts both for "scarcity 
of monev" and "the high price of gold," or "the 
corner in gold," of the days of Bryanesque jim jams 
in 1896. 

We pas's over the "sun-spot" theory of hard times. 
It is too profound for us to handle with our usual 



202 ' 

distinguished ability. Alas, for our unresponsive 
brain-cells ! 

Then the^^ say, your Honors, do these wily plain- 
tiffs', that the trouble which follows the "revision" 
of the dike arises from "bad" or "short" crops. At 
any rate, when the people have kicked up a large 
bobbery over the broken dike and have repaired it 
more or less, these wily plaintiffs account for the 
reurn of good times by "good crops." It is strange 
that there are never any good crops' when the dike 
is in a state of "revision." But it is easy to ex- 
plain "bumper crops," your Honors. When the 
dike is "revised," prices are so low because of our 
weak workless demand, arising from our want of 
wages to buy with, that there is no encouragement 
to a farmer to raise much more than what he wants 
to eat himself So he does not do it. But when the 
mended dike dams money in the country and for- 
eign competition out, demand picks up and prices' 
follow ; then the farmer plants with the crops that 
bring the best price every inch of ground he can 
clear and clean. Now, your Honors, this country 
is a good deal larger than an ordinary pocket hand- 
kerchief, and when prices are high, and the returns 
are in at harvest time, the crop from this whole 
great country is sure to be a "bumper." Bad 
weather cannot spoil a part of it large enough not 
to leave an abundance afterwards. And so, as 
times continue good behind the dike, the farmer 
])lants more and more every year, becaus-e it means 
more and more cash. But smash the dike, let prices 
fall to the bottom rung, and your crops fall with 
them. 

What is a crop worth, if you can't sell it? 

"Over-trading" and "over-speculation" are of the 
s;nne sort of timber as the "over-production" apol- 



203 

ogy for the hard times following "revision." If 
you "over-trade" and business still is good, just hold 
your horses a moment, until they quit their canter- 
ing and until steadiness returns to the vehicle. If 
you "over-speculate" you are a bad penny, anyway, 
and belong to the crazy-gamblers ward at Bellevue. 
But in either case, with the dike down, and the Im- 
porting Trust doing all the business, when a man 
is pulled to his knees, there is no getting up. 
Everything is flat and the devil to pay with no pitch 
hot. 



XX 



IT IS THE CENTURY-OLD POLICY OF THE WILY PLAIN- 
TIFF^ THE IMPORTING TRUST^ TO FORCE THE PROS- 
PERITY OF THIS COUNTRY TO DEPEND UPON CROPS. 

The reason why the Importing Trust and all its 
retainers have so much to say about "crops" as the 
rock upon which American prosperity is built, is 
that the condition which has made us so largely an 
agricultural people, and therefore so largely de- 
pendent upon crops, is one created by the power of 
the Importing Trust expressly to keep its hold on 
our cash. You will recollect that we said some 
time back that the wily plaintiff, the Importing 
Trust, had been since our earliest colonial 
times, the worst enemy of American Production, 
and for the reason that American products compete 
in our market here with foreign products and the 
Importing Trust gets no brokerage from American 
products ; whereas it gets a very high brokerage on 
every pound, yard, and gross of foreign products 
brouc:ht into our market. You will remember what 



204 

we said about this wily plaintiff, the Importing 
Trust, securing acts of Parliament forbidding us, 
as American colonists, to manufacture various 
goods, in order to compel us to buy all our manufac- 
tured necessaries and luxuries of the wily plaintiff. 
We were not forbidden to raise farm stuff, for the 
English wanted that and got it at their own price. 
Therefore, instead of developing in a consistent and 
symmetrical manner upwards from a broad base of 
diversified industries, we were forced in the direc- 
tion of wheat, and corn, cotton, lumber, and such 
things; and instead of being able to sell our farm 
products to our own manufacturing settle- 
ments, which we would have been permitted to build 
but for England's Exporting and Importing Trusts, 
we were compelled still to raise food for "the mar- 
kets of the world" and so to wander farther and 
farther West and turn up new grain fields and lay 
out new cattle ranches, all to feed "the world" in- 
stead of ourselves. In other words, we were con- 
gested upon one general field of employment, to our 
practical enslavement to foreign patronage of our 
products. And so our "crops" came to cut a large 
figure in our foreign trade, and they have continued 
to hold us in a sort of peonage to Europe ever since. 
If our "crops" fail we are under the wheels of 
Europe's automobile in a moment. Because about 
one-half of all the heap of stuff we send abroad 
every year is products' of the soil ; and as our 
ostensible credit balance last year, for instance, 
wns about S4 00.000,000, if our exports of |2,000,- 
000,000 were reduced by "bad crops" to |1,000,000,- 
000, we should be owing 1600,000,000 a year to for- 
eign countries instead of their owing us, and soon be 
in the midst of a panic. And "bad crops" would 
immediatelv follow the "revision" of the dike. This 



205 

is a vicious and quite unnecessary condition of 
things, your Honors. There is no sound reason, un- 
less to increase the commissions of the Importing 
Trust be a sound reason, for our constantly rising 
imports of manufactured goods. More, your Hon- 
ors, there is no reason whatever, except a reason 
which spells profit to these wily plaintiffs, the Im- 
porting and the Exporting Trusts, and at the ex- 
pense of the whole country, why we should import a 
penny's worth of anything at all. As we have said 
before and now say again in all seriousness, we 
can easily produce a satisfactory substitute for, if 
not the exact counterpart of, everything we now 
import. And this statement extends to coffee, tea, 
and spices. But we are in perpetual bondage to 
foreign countries in order that the Importing Trust 
may get richer and richer at our expense and our 
Exporting Trust may learn deeper and deeper les- 
sons in its text-book of treason. We are made 
the foot-ball of weather and foreign diplomacy by 
being tied down to "crops'^ as the pivot of our 
prosperity. And yet "crops'' fail at the time they 
are most needed and for a good reason. They 
never were known to fail until the dike was broken 
down. The breaking of the dike kills American 
demand in the way we have explained before. That 
makes prices too low for profit, and the farmei 
does not see why he should work for nothing any 
more than the manufactui^er. Why should he sweat 
himself thin just to send more "crops" to Europe 
at Europe's own price and keep "the balance of 
trade" favorable for our bankers and the Importing^ 
Trust? So when prices drop, the American farmer 
drops, and the "crops" drop, tr?o, at the very mo- 
ment when, by compelling us to buy goods* abroad, 
the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, has created 



20G 

the need of even greater "crops'' to "balance" the 
damage it has done. This accounts for the frightful 
swing and sweep of panic among us when the dike 
is broken down or "revised." Yet, your Honors, 
see by what shrewd shuffling the wily plaintiff 
tries' to fool our people! The dike is broken first. 
American demand for farm produce instantly fol- 
lows; and low prices drive the American farmer 
to gunning for woodchucks instead of planting po- 
tatoes, corn, and wheat. The "crops" lie down. 
Imports go up with nothing to call their bluff. 
Panic overwhelms us. But the wily plaintiff 
shuffles the pack so the panic card turns up in his 
hand after the "short crops" card, and he says, 
"See! Short crops drew out panic!" 

A wise policy would so distribute our property- 
production that there would be no surplus for ex- 
port. We would raise all our own sugar, for one 
thing, putting a prohibitive tariff-dike up against 
Cuba and all other sugar-producing countries; 
and we would do the same with rice and tobacco; 
and follow with a good export tariff on cotton and 
a prohibitive import tariff both on raw and manu- 
factured cotton. We would also gradually pro- 
liibit the importation of wool and double our tar- 
iffs on manufactures of wool. We would prohibit 
the importation of steel in any form and place 
an export tariff on all its products. The importa- 
tion or exportation of ores of all kinds should 
likewise be prohibited. And so we would go over 
the list, gradually increasing the tariffs on every 
manufacture; prohibiting the importation of 
every staple of the soil and every food product; 
and placing an export tariff on everything now 
exported in large quantities, and especially on all 
articles which are ha^bitually s'old abroad cheaper 



207 

than at home. In this way our own people would 
have the benefit on the one hand of all the employ- 
ment necessary to supply our own wants, which 
would make wages high; and of limiting largely 
to the domestic market the sale of supplies aris- 
ing from our own industry, which would make 
prices constantly lower until they reached the 
point where a lower price would cause the emi- 
gration of capital, where they would stick. Your 
Honors, we cannot too seriously impress upon you 
the great importance of turning over a new leaf 
in this matter. These wily plaintiffs should be 
sent to the tail of the procession. They are lead- 
ing our country into a bad morass. They breed 
in us a sort of conceit best adapted to keeping us 
docile in their service. They tell us about ^•'un- 
exampled supplies of raw materials'' and say we 
are destined forever to be "the granaries of the 
world.'' And so they brush and curry us and feed us 
sugar from their hands. Nobody has such wheat fields ; 
nobody such cotton soil! Our cattle ranches beat 
the sun, moon, and stars and all the planets ! We 
are simply immense! Did you ever stop to think, 
your Honors, what it was that, in the mind of the 
wily plaintiff, makes us such good fellows for pur- 
veying to Europe, sending her our wheat, and corn, 
and cotton, our beef, pork, and other provisions? 
Simply because as long as w^e will feed Europe, 
she will be perfectly willing to do our manufact- 
uring. It pays to manufacture and it don't pay 
to feed the manufacturer at the manufacturer's 
figures. But that is what we are doing for Europe. 
We are wasting the very royal substance of our 
noble country in feeding aliens to destroy our in- 
dustries. If w^e should get the prices at which 
alone it would pay us to export it, Europe would 



208 

not buy it ot uss. She would raise her own food. 
She has land enough to do it; and to do it, all 
she would need to do would be to put a portion 
of the power she now puts into her manufactur- 
ing upon the transformation of her gentleman's 
parks and shooting preserves, her swamps and her 
forests, into grain fields and cattle farms. The 
wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, through its 
learned counsel, has told you that Europe would 
starve if we shut off her food supply, for we are 
the onliest only food-producer in the world. All 
rot, your Honors. The Importing Trust says so 
because the Importing Trust does not want us to 
shut off its commissions by building factories in- 
stead of grain-elevators. It has been on the job 
of collecting tribute from us as colony and State, 
for a couple of hundred years or so, and it has 
succeeded tolerably well in making the thought- 
less think there is something like a divine right 
in its hold on us. As long as it was big enough 
and we were little enough, it bullied us outright 
and made us carry water to its mill. But now 
that it can paddle us no more, it hypnotizes us. 
That is the course taken in all its newspapers. 
There is no argument in the discourse you read 
about "revising" the tariff. They do not state a 
single fact to back their glittering generalities. 
They merely suggest the imperishable perservance 
of foreign trade. They assume it is the thing, 
and the only thing we have to look to for happi- 
ness. And by these suggestions they breathe into 
the million the feeling that foreign trade is the 
whole show. This is the tone of all the large 
bankers and brokers in our seaboard cities. The 
boards of trade almost universally fiddle on the 
sam-e string. The orator from whom we quoted. 



209 

about the "practically certain recession in trade" 
and who drapes in the impenetrable cloud of Olym- 
pian mystery the whole fact of the killing effect 
of imports upon our business activity, is a dis« 
tinguished banker in one of our gxeat seaport 
cities; and his whole oration is based on the un- 
utterable unutterableness of foreign trade as the 
key to American development. This seems as true 
to these people as it is false in fact. They have 
been reared in an importing atmosphere. They 
think in terms of exports and imports. The 
"money market'' is believed to be dependent upon 
the "crop report'' as showing our probable bal- 
ance of credit in foreign hands. But the fact is, 
your Honors', this country is great in spite of for- 
eign trade, not because of it; and it is great only 
in the proportion in which its sagacity is great 
enough, by an adequate tariff dike, to shut out 
cost-20 foreign goods from its cost-100 domestic 
market 

To encourage exports, your Honors, is to en- 
courage a non-symmetrical unfolding of our eco- 
nomical life. This means disaster in the near 
future. Instead of exhausting our soil only 
enough to feed our o^ti people, we are boasting 
that we "are feeding the w^orld," as counsel for 
the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, said in 
your hearing, an hour or so ago. Instead of rais- 
ing only cotton enough to run our own mills, w^e 
think it a great feather in our cap to raise enough 
for Europe besides. But Europe is laughing in 
its sleeve; for the only reason it does not raise 
its own cotton through its African and South 
American dependencies and allies, is because it 
pays better to spend its money in cotton factories, 
make up our cotton into goods and then send 



210 

them back to us. Aud &o we go on exhausting 
in a century stores' that should last us a thousand 
years at least; and all the time we are giving the 
other fellow the best end of the job. For we 
send him a bale of cotton for which he pays us 
X dollars; and from that same bale of cotton 
he returns us cotton manufactures for which we 
pay him X+Y dollars. He keeps us at work 
hoeing corn to feed his pigs which he slaughters 
and sells back to us for twice as much money as 
he paid us for the corn that fattened them. Mean- 
time, he is doing a work which raises him higher 
and higher while we are wrestling with a job 
which keeps us most of the time in cow-hide boots 
and blue-over-alls. Our service comes very cheap 
to him; his very dear to us. 

But this is not all, your Honors. In this pur- 
veying to foreign needs, we get a distorted de- 
velopment. If we raised food for our own people 
alone, we would not employ a larger force than 
necessary to that end. But if we furnish food for 
the world, we draw off into our food-making in- 
dustry a disproportionate number of our people. 
Now if we kept only enough farmers in the field 
to farm for us, they would never lack a market. 
But if we trained a great army of them to work 
for Europe, and Europe should take a notion 
some day to do her own work in that line or buy 
it elsewhere, what would our army of farmers do, 
being thus out of employment? For employment 
means grub; and in this problem of national hap- 
piness, your Honors, we are dealing very largely 
with stomachs which on pain of their otherwise 
going on strike and putting their owners' out of 
business, have to be filled several times every 
twenty-four hours. This matter of domestic trade 



211 

is, after all, a very homely, and we are afraid to 
some of our broad-clothed, free-trade doctrinaires, 
a very vulgar business; but upon it depend our 
hearts and homes and hopes. 

For all these reasons, your Honors, we believe 
that w'e should "cut out'' foreign trade altogether 
and with it our dependence upon "crops" as our 
one source of happiness. 



XXI 



PORTING TRUST^ TO AROUSE OUR PEOPLE AGAINST 
AMERICAN PRODUCTION, MISNAMED "THE 
TRUSTS/^ IS THE MOST INFAMOUS AND DEADLY 
OF ALL ITS METHODS OF DESTROYING THE TAR- 
IFF DIKE^ LEADING^ AS IT DOES^ TO CONTEMPT 
FOR PROPERTY RIGHTS ON THE PART OF THE IG- 
NORANT^ AND OFFERING^ AS IT DOES^ TO UNPRIN- 
CIPLED POLITICIANS AN OPPORTUNITY TO BLACK- 
MAIL OUR MOST IMPORTANT INDUSTRIES UNDER 
COLOR OF PROTECTING THE PEOPLE AGAtNST 

Your Honors, w^e have show^n you some of the 
veils of mystery with which the wily defendant, 
the Importing Trust, drapes its attacks upon the 
savings-bank fund of our people. We have ex- 
plained how "scarcity of money," "over-produc- 
tion," "over-trading," "over-speculation," "corner 
in gold," "high price of gold," and "bad" or 
"short" crops are held up to explain hard times 
and panics w^hich result immediately from a "re- 
vision" of the tariff dik^. But there is one other 
explanation w^hich the wily plaintiff makes, both 



212 

for panics and hard times when the dike is down, 
and for high prices when the dike is up. We mean 
American Production, our client, burdened with 
the name of "the trusts." It is a part of the re- 
ligion of the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, 
to trace directly to American Production every 
ill to which this country is heir. This has been 
so almost from the very day of the landing of the 
Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth. For example, it 
blames present high prices on to "the trusts." 
But since our tariff -dike was mended in 1897 by 
the Dingley Law, there has been all over the 
world a general rise in prices. Now there is no 
doubt, your Honors, that our mended tariff-dike 
caused this general rise. For it set at work again 
at good pay our millions of wage-producers and 
so poured a great flood of wages upon our do- 
mestic market in a constantly rising demand and 
our wave of prosperity was felt "round the world," 
and prices began to rise universally; because, 
though, while acting as a dike, the tariff kept out 
a large part of the ocean of foreign surplus pro- 
ducts', nevertheless, while acting as a dam, the 
same tariff failed to keep in the country all the 
wages paid to our wage-producers, and it was the 
money of our wage-producers going out in return 
for foreign goods coming in through our leaky 
dike, which caused the world-wide rise in prices; 
and yet the whole thing was laid to the American 
"trusts," otherwise our client, American Produc- 
tion, who was represented as "entering into com- 
binations in restraint of trade" and "extorting" 
and "exacting" dreadful prices from the poor peo- 
ple, every mother's son of whom was "extorting" 
and "exacting'' a higher price for his merchan- 
dise, namely, the labor of his hands. It was all 



213 

right for the price of ^vage^s to rise. That was 
approved by all American patriots. But when the 
price of other things rose, it was '^the trusts" who 
were "extorting" and "exacting" robber tolls and 
tributes. Oh, consistency, where is thy jeweled 
form ! Oh justice where are thy scales ! 

But the point is, your Honors, that the "trusts" 
did not put up prices. Prices Avent up all over the 
world and from the same cause, namely, the in- 
creased demand for goods because of the increased 
wage-payments to labor. Where would be the 
equity in compelling the "trusts" to sell their goods 
cheaper than others sold their goods? Prices had 
gone up and, for what they bought to work into 
their goods, they were compelled to pay higher 
prices. Who should say that they had not the 
same right to get back in the price of what they 
sold the higher price they paid for what they 
bought? 

The wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, by its 
learned counsel, also says that the "trusts" sell 
abroad cheaper than at home? Your Honors, since 
when were the laws repealed which gave people, 
"trusts" or not "trusts," the right to sell their 
property at any price they pleased? Are those 
who sneeze when the Importing Trust takes snuff 
willing to have the Importing Trust step into their 
private affairs and fix the price also at which 
they shall sell their goods? This criticism of 
the "trusts" for selling where they please, when 
they please, and at what prices they please, so 
long as our laws remain unchanged, is criminal 
impertinence which every decent American citi- 
zen should resent. There is one thing certain, 
your Honors : If you could inspect the brain-cells 
of people who take kindly to this arraignment of 



214 

the "trusts," you would find them very much like 
the brain-cells of many other people, commonly 
called "pickpockets,'' who also have derived the 
notion from some source that they have a right to 
take the property of others at their own appraisal. 
But about this "selling cheaper abroad than at 
home" again: Do the disciples and followers of 
the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, imagine 
that "the trusts" sell abroad at lower prices than 
they must? What is it that has so suddenly 
breathed into the monster "trust" the soul of a 
Sister of Charity? Surely, we should clap our 
hands and stamp our feet with joy at the sight of 
such a sinner come to repentance and good works. 
But look at the consistency of the wily plaintiff, 
the Importing Trust, your Honors! From one 
side of its mouth it is lashing the "trusts" for 
selling so cheaply abroad; w^hile from the other 
side it is barking for a "revision" of the tariff- 
dike in order that these same "trusts" may get 
cheaper raw materials from abroad in order to 
sell abroad their finished products even at lower 
prices than they are now asking! Isn't the fabric 
of its feigning altogether too diaphanous for suc- 
cessful deception, your Honors? Isn't this a Walk- 
into-my-Parlor-said-the-Spider-to-the-Fly s k) n g 
which the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust is 
piping to the country, your Honors? Look! It 
says the dike must be "revised" because the 
"trusts" are selling things too cheap abroad ! And 
it says the dike must be "revised" because the 
"trusts" are not selling things cheap enough 
abroad! The point upon which the wily plaintiff, 
the Importing Trust, forever fixes its gaze is the 
tariff-dike which to a certain moderate extent 
only, dams out of the country the goods of the 



215 

Importing Trust; and for every ill which it dis- 
covers to be hurting the dear American people its 
prescription is "revision.'' Isn't the wily plaintiff 
too thin, your Honors? Now your Honors, if it 
were any of the people's business at what price 
any citizen of the United States' of America sold 
his goods either at home or abroad, the dear peo- 
ple could stop the "trusts" from selling cheaper 
abroad than at home by putting an export tariff 
on the goods thus sold, making the tariff equal 
to the difference between the price at home and 
the price abroad for the same thing. This could 
be done without smashing the dike and drowning 
the country; by this means covetous citizens, who 
sell their labor in the American market from twice 
to ten times as high as they could sell it abroad, 
would have cooled at least one cause of their palm- 
itching. But, after all, the price at which the 
"trusts" sell abroad is the market price abroad 
for such things; and what they sell at home is 
their market price at home. If it is wrong for the 
"trusts" to get market prices abroad, is it right 
for the Importing Trust to get market prices here 
and for workers who join the Importing Trust 
crusade against the "trusts" to get market wages 
at home? Where are we, any way, your Honors, 
in this casuistic confusion? 

One point more as to selling abroad cheaper 
than at home, your Honors: You have heard of 
our department store bargain counters, have you 
not, your Honors? Upon these bargain counters 
are odds and ends of goods sold far below their 
ordinary price. Are these bargain counters' un- 
lawful and is it wrongs thus to sell when, where, 
and how you can surpluses that might otherwise 
remain unsold? Or is it wrong, your Honors, to 



216 

^^clear out'^ a summer's stock in order to make way 
for a winter's display? Should we be bound to 
the same prices in all respects, your Honors, and 
can no circumstances, contingencies, or emergen- 
cies justify one's selling to Tom cheaper than he 
already has sold to Dick or Harry? Should our 
department stores be forbidden to have "sales," 
during which, mayhap, they sell the same goods 
to-day for half the price of yesterday? Now, your 
Honors, if it is lawful for our "trusts" thus to have 
"bargain counters" and "sales" at home, by what 
rule is it unlawful for them to have "sales" and 
"bargain counters" abroad? What is it that 
learned counsel for the wily plaintiff, the Import- 
ing Trust remarks, your Honors? Ah, he says 
that our people, having nursed these "trusts" to 
life by tariff impositions, have a right to insist 
upon receiving the benefit of the lowest prices at 
which the "trusts" sell. But, your Honors, the 
learned counsel does not notice the fact that the 
tariff-dike is absolutely impartial and shelters not 
here and there a "trust" but the whole people; 
and if the "trusts" get higher prices at home than 
abroad it is because they have to pay the people 
higher prices' than the people could get abroad. 
Isn't it fair to get back as much as you give? If 
the "trusts" must reduce their prices to where 
they would stand if there were no tariff-dike, ought 
not the people to reduce their wages, too, to what 
they would get if they competed with the world 
outside? Is not sauce for the goose also sauce 
for the gander, your Honors? 

Eight in connection with this matter, your 
Honors, we want to illustrate to you once more 
the subtle ways in which these wily plaintiffs, 
tlie Importing and Exporting Trusts, attack the 



217 

tariff-dike, in the interest of their respective 
pockets. The illustration is furnished by a tariff 
deliverance by a Congressman, Hon. Samuel W. 
McCall, who is put down in the World Almanac 
as hailing from Winchester, Massachusetts, born 
in Pennsylvania, educated at Dartmouth College, 
by profession a lawyer and in politics a Kepubli- 
can. At any rate he is a firm member of the Im- 
porting Trust, judging from his article in the Cen- 
tury for October, 1907, entitled "Outlook for Tar- 
iff Reform." In that article he says : 

"In certain articles of prime necessity, great combina- 
tions have destroyed internal competition" — 

a statement, to begin with, your Honors', which 
is absolutely false. There is not a single "combi- 
nation'' in this country which has even begun to 
destroy "internal competition." The gentleman 
who said this was looking through Importing-Tru&t 
spectacles colored blood red. But to continue: 

"have destroyed internal competition and with refer- 
ence to such articles the tariff wall serves the purpose of 
shutting out the succor that might come from abroad." 

Yes, your Honors. We believe he must have 
been educated at Dartmouth and have drawn in 
with the milk of his alma mater great, soul-filling 
drafts of inspiration about the "markets' of the 
world." Continuing : 

"Those who are interested in that sort of a discourse 
may discuss the genealogy of the trusts, but the man 
whose pockets the law has just helped monopoly to pick 
cares little whether the tariff is called the mother or the 
grandmother of the trusts." 

Saidbravely, your Honors. But we think the World 
Almanac must have omitted one McCall ; for there 



218 

seems to be two. This could not have been Hon. 
Samuel W. McCall, marked "R" and said to hail 
from Massachusetts. The one who wrote these 
words must hail from Mississippi and be the con- 
gressional understudy of John Sharp Williams. 
Continuing : 

*'It matters little to him whether the law creates the 
implements of plunder or whether it seizes the victim and 
delivers him over hound for the operation." 

This sounds more like a Democratic stump 
speech against protection than like a serious con- 
tribution to a reputable magazine, your Honors. 
We hav-e all heard precisely these same words be- 
fore many, many, many times; but from people 
who did not masquerade either as Eepublicans 
or Protectionists. Continuing: 

* * But the fact cannot be doubted that, in some lines of 
manufacture in which we are able to compete and do 
compete with foreign producers in their own or neutral 
markets, a combination, in the absence of internal com- 
petition, is able to require the American consumer to pay 
the full foreign price with the duty added. In such a 
case, the simple effect of the duty is to make it necessary 
for the consumer to pay tribute to the manufacturer." 

Tour Honors, we have observed that this man 
is a lawyer. We would not like to know the size 
of the retainer paid him by the Importing Trust 
to plead its case so eloquently. But in writing 
such stuff as this, he smashes himself all to pieces 
as even a pretended protectionist. He evidently 
belongs in the coterie of President Roosevelt and 
the rest of the German Agreement crowd. He does 
not believe in living up to the very weak and di- 
luted protection promises of the Republican plat- 
forms. They promise the American workman a 
tariff, not that will 2rive him his own domestic 



219 

market as against all comers, but one whicli will 
give him as good a show to fight for what is al- 
ready his own as' the alien abroad has to take it 
from him. The "duty" was promised to be great 
enough to equal the difference between American 
and foreign wages. That is, so high that those 
who bought imported goods in this market should 
pay at least the foreign market price, and the 
"duty added.'' This is what our brave Congress- 
man kicks about. He does not want to pay the 
foreign price "with the duty added." Living in 
America, getting American fees and American com- 
forts generally, he wants to buy foreign goods at 
foreign prices, with the duty "not added;" that 
is with the dike "revised" and such as he allowed 
to pay others' foreign wages, while getting Ameri- 
can wages themselves. But our Congressman 
will say : "You don't understand my point, which 
is that the manufacturers are our proteges; we 
make a tariff for them to work behind because 
they can't work without it. We give them the 
privilege of getting higher prices here than they 
can abroad and they ought to reciprocate the 
favor and give us lower prices here than they get 
abroad; or, at any rate just as low prices as they 
get abroad. But now, since they have gotten 
cockey and are charging us higher prices than 
they g(^i: abroad, I say tumble down the tariff 
dike and make them work for us as cheap as they 
work for foreigners or go out of business." Your 
Honors, this is about the gist of what our Con- 
j^Tessman would say. But he is about as thick as a 
lath and as broad as floor-crack in the way he un- 
dorstnnds this tariff question. We put a tariff on 
foreisrn goods for the benefit of the whole coun- 
try and as a general principle, not as a favor to 



220 

any manufacturer, either in Massachusetts or 
Mississippi. We want done here the business rep- 
resented by the money piled up in the mill. We 
want employed here the people employed in mak- 
ing the goods which our people want; and we 
want the wages paid for making goods of that 
kind spent by our workers' right in our own stores 
here and not by alien laborers in stores abroad; 
and because some American manufacturer sells 
his goods in a weak foreign market at a weak for- 
eign price, we don't want to make blithering idiots 
of ourselves and smash all this American business 
with a smashed tariff dike. Nobody but a vas- 
sal of the Importing Trust would waste his breath 
with any such drivel. 

And, then, our Congressman paints' himself all 
over "Free Trader" in bilious green letters, when 
he utters the kind of nonsense he uttered in the 
October Century. If he believes in smashing the 
dike to drown out the fellow who can sell cheaper 
abroad than at home and does so sell, he believes 
also in doing the same thing to the fellow who 
could sell cheaper abroad than at home, and don't 
so sell for fear Congressman McCall will "peach'' 
on him and get Congress to rip down the tariff- 
dike and drown out the whole country. For, as 
we have said, we do not take it that Congress- 
man McCall would destroy an American manu- 
facturer's American market just for revenge or 
for m.ere punishment, so the manufacturer would 
not do it as^ain; but only because, in his opinion, 
selling abroad as cheap or cheaoer than at home 
would iirove that the infant industry had grown 
U13 and no longer needed the nursing bottle of 
"Protection." And that would be proven just as 
well by getting President Koosevelt's Bureau of 



221 

Corporations to look over the manufacturer's 
books and, finding that the manufacturer if he 
chose, could sell abroad cheaper than at home, 
and still not go out of business, as it would be 
proven by the fact that he had already done so. 
So that, if Congressman McCall is not talking for 
a fee or for buncombe, the first thing he will do 
when he gets the congressional floor will be to in- 
troduce a bill authorizing and directing said Bu- 
reau of Corporations to sit in judgment on the 
profits of all our manufacturers, to the end that a 
law may be pass-ed stripping of tariff protection 
all manufacturers who if they wanted to, could 
sell abroad cheaper than at home. 

If he does not do this, another good man will 
have been snared in by malefactors* of great wealth 
or by the conspiracy of rich men. 

When you stop to think of it, your Honors, the 
logical result of Mr. McCalPs reasoning would be 
to take off the tariff on everything the American 
producers of which sold any of it at all abroad. 
Because, to sell abroad, whether at a lower or a 
higher price than at home, proves that foreign 
competition is powerless not only to pay ocean 
freights and take our domestic market from us, 
but, paying no freights, to keep us out of the for- 
eign market. Now, Mr. McCall would say, "What 
is tlie use of your dike if the foreio^ier can't keep 
you out of his own market?" Well, we export 
an infinite variety of goods in small quantities, 
sw^eepings of our shops, etc., besides some things 
like raw cotton, wheat, apples, provisions^ etc., 
etc., in very large quantities, and if we followed 
Mr. McCall's rule, the tariff would come off of all 
these things we export, no matter if they were 
only sweepings sold at auction rates. 



222 

Another thing, your Honors. Mr. McCall does 
not claim that these wicked combinations of which 
he speaks in the October Century are paying their 
workers only European wages. The fact is that 
they are paying American wag"es, which, in some 
branches are from three to four times as* high as 
European wages. Now what Mr. McCall is root- 
ing for with all his might is that these manufactu- 
rers should have an opportunity to pay foreign 
wages on goods sold in this market. For, take 
off the tariff, and our manufacturers would cut 
down wages here to the level of foreign wages, 
plus the expense of getting goods from abroad to 
this market; if they did not, they would not be 
business' men. For all it would cost them to get 
their work done at foreign wages would be those 
wages plus the expense of getting goods here from 
abroad. Because our manufacturers could sup- 
ply their trade with ready-made goods straight 
from abroad, either from their own plants already 
h)cated others, or by contract with foreign manu- 
facturers. A great many manufacturers are do- 
ing it in part now. And this accounts for our 
great importations of partly manufactured arti- 
cles, which is only a partial development of a 
business which, with the tariff-dike "revised,'' 
would find its full development very soon. We 
think it likely that Congressman McCall, in writ- 
ing as he does, is pleading the case of certain 
^Massachusetts manufacturers who already buy 
ready made in Europe, at the European wage- 
level, parts of their product which they assemble 
here; but who, seeing the great profit in thus 
getting a part of their work done in Europe, are 
anxious to have the dike "revised'' so they can 
s^et it all done there, and resolve themselves into 



223 

mere assembling establjslimejits, or, the parts also 
being assembled in Europe, into mere American 
selling agencies of* their European-made goods'. 
Now, the only thing in the world which prevents 
this thing being done wholly and not in part, as 
now, is the very weak tariff-dike which we already 
have. This illustrates what we are trying to im- 
press upon this Court, and that is that this coun- 
try is and always has been exploited by these 
wily plaintiffs, who are mere peddlers after all, 
having no love of country or home, ready to be 
changed from Exporter to Importer or vice versa, 
at a moment's notice; that is, from a builder of 
American factories to a destroyer of American fac- 
tories, in accordance with the showing of their 
profit and loss account. They are two practically 
dumb and dead forces, like the force of gravita- 
tion, arising as they both do from the instinct of 
self-preser-vation. And what we are pleading for, 
your Honors, is that the same force which drives 
these wily plaintiffs into such tremendous activity, 
piling up wealth, as it does, within a compar- 
atively narrow circle, simply by fomenting the 
sentiments and prejudices of the people to adopt 
such laws as, by destructive competition, will 
segregate our national wealth from the workers, 
and gather it in the hands of the members of these 
wily plaintiffs — that this same force which works 
such marvels for these wily plaintiffs may be har- 
nessed to our own national and communal reaper 
and pile up wealth for the widest possible distri- 
bution among the people of this nation. This is 
what would happen, if we raised a dike so high 
on the one hand and a dam so high on the other 
that no American jobs would leak away for for- 
eign workers to do to the lowering of our wages, 



224 

and no American-made goods, the natural property 
of those who made them, would leak away to for- 
eign countries, to our impoverishment in goods 
and the increase of our prices. 

It seems, your Honors, as if, after all, this mat- 
ter of punishing manufacturers for selling abroad 
cheaper than at home had nothing to do with the 
necessity of the tariff dike. We raise tariff dikes, 
not for individuals, but for the country at large. 
The business made by the wants of this country 
is the propert}^ of its citizens. It is yours, your 
Honors, and ours. To destroy the dike is to dis- 
perse this business abroad. Whatever any one or 
any hundred and one manufacturers do with their 
goods abroad has nothing to do with the case. We 
ought not to destroy our country to get square 
with individuals who, it is rumored, are getting 
a good thing by manufacturing here. What would 
you think, your Honors, of the Hollanders, if, be- 
cause some provision-dealer there handed across 
their dikes to here and there a foreign boatman on 
the outside rancid butter at lower prices than he 
asked for good butter from his own countrymen, 
the Hollanders should avenge themselves by tear- 
ing down all their dikes and letting the sea swal- 
loAV up their country. Congressman McCall is 
too absurd, your Honors. He ought not to expect 
sensible people to believe for a moment that tn^ 
real reason why he wants the tariff-dike destroyed 
is to get square with the wicked manufacturers. 

Ah, your Honors, counsel for the wily plaintiff, 
the Imi)orting Trust, asks the indulgence of the 
Court to make another interruption of our argu- 
ment. He says that while, by the tariff -dike, prices 
of goods here are hoisted too high the wages of the 
people are not affected by the tariff -dike but are 



225 

fixed by the richness of the country's natural re- 
sources and the ease with which '^raw materials" 
can be worked into wealth. He says in this regard 
America has no peer; and just as long as the 
natural treasures of the country are "economically 
utilized and safe-guarded from vandalism" the 
American pay-roll will be the largest in the world. 
Ah, your Honors, if "America has no peer" in its 
stock of cheap raw materials, why does the wily 
plaintiff, the Importing Trust, turn heaven and 
earth, backed with all the might of the wily plain- 
tiff, the Exporting Trust, to have the dike "re- 
vised,'' so raw materials can be admitted free for 
use in Exporting-Trust products in "conquering 
the markets of the world?" We believe we have 
asked this question before and do not remember 
having an answer from the learned counsel whose 
interruption we are now replying to. 

What does he now say, your Honors? That the 
"superiority of our labor and its greater skill and 
efficiency supplement our raw materials in es- 
tablishing a pay-roll without an equal on earth," 
and a pay-roll which is in no wise indebted to the 
"Chinese Wall" of a tariff which girdles the coun- 
try. That is distilled honey for American labor, 
your Honors'. With our skill in cerebral inspec- 
tion, your Honors, we verily believe that, if the 
learned counsel really believes that statement, we 
w^ould find a bunch of honey bees occupying his 
bum.p of causality instead of virile brain-cells. 
But he does not believe it, your Honors. It is all 
in his fee and not in his head — this argument 
which simply makes ducks and drakes of the old 
economic law relating to the ratio between supply 
and demand. You know, your Honors, fully as 
well as we, what that old law is. With demand 



226 

and supply equal, your price remains the same. 
With demand larger than supply, prices rise. 
With supply larger than demand, prices fall. 
That, in its essence is all there is of it; and it 
is just as true as the multiplication table. Let 
two customers bid for the same supply, and the 
one who gives the higher price gets the goods. 
Prices rise. Let two sellers offer to one and the 
same customer the same goods, and the seller 
sells who will sell the lower. Prices' fall. This 
rule applies to men, women, and children selling 
their labor in the same way that it applies to 
other people selling goods. And yet counsel for 
the wily plaintiff says that the tariff -dike, which 
prevents' the American supply of labor, amount- 
ing to about 20,000,000 hands, large and small, 
from being increased to 200,000,000 million hands, 
without any increase whatever in demand, has no 
effect in maintaing American wages! We do not 
like to be disrespectful, your Honors, but we would 
much like the opportunity to measure our learned 
brother's head — that is, if he really believes his 
own statement. We have explained to you before 
the disparity between American and foreign wages. 
Our learned brother did not dispute us, when we 
fixed the outside world at wage-20 and our own 
inside world at wage-100; and we believe that he 
agrees with us that, for all practical purpose our 
figures' are near enough to the fact. Now, your 
Honors, what would happen if, at the door of 
some factory of ours where they paid their work- 
ers $2 a day apiece, some cold morning there pre- 
sented themselves a body of workers as to num- 
bers and skill, exactly like the workers' inside, Avho 
offered to work for 40 cents a day apiece. Suppose 
the pay-roll of the mill were now |200 per day, and 



227 

its owner could hire ilii« new gang of men at a 
total of |40 a day — hj Avhat rule of business would 
you say lie went by if he did not go to his w^orkers 
and say, ^^Either you will have to work for 40c a 
day apiece, or I must hire these other fellow^s at 
that price. I cannot alford to lose |160 a day 
because of my kindness of heart?" But put our 
whole country in the place of the single mill, 
your Honors, and let the mill-owner be repre- 
sented by the national sentiment which has con- 
sented to dike ^^revision.-' Suppose the dike has 
been "revised"' and no longer prevents competition 
betw^een the worker at wage-20 in the outside 
Avorld and the worker at wage-100 on our inside 
world. There is now no sentiment to prefer do- 
mestic workers at wage-100 to foreign workers at 
wage-20; for the tariff-dike was the only form in 
which the people expressed that sentiment and 
they have now done away with the dike. So now 
it is "Every man for himself and the devil take 
the hindmost!" What happens your Honors? 
Does the country consent to buy with its savings 
labor at wage-100 when labor is offered by the Im- 
porting Trust in the form of all kinds of goods at 
an average of wage-20? Well, your Honors, in 
order that what counsel for the wily plaintiff, the 
Importing Trust, says, could be true, namely, that 
wages are neither increased, maintained, nor de- 
creased, because of the presence or absence of the 
tariff -dike, it would be necessary that the nation, 
as one mill-owner, should throw away the differ- 
ence between the cost at w^age-100 of our manu- 
factured goods, say $17,000,000,000 (their cost to us 
in 1906) and their cost at wage-20 or |3,400,000,- 
000, that is, a difference of |13,600,000,000. Now 
curiously enough, if we buy the same amount we 



228 

bought in 1906, our present savings bank fund is 
just about enough to buy a year's supply of manu- 
factures at cost-20. We might live a year with the 
dike down and enjoy the riot of cheapness per- 
mitted by the incoming of foreign goods at cost-20. 
But after that we would have to work or starve; 
for our savings' would be gone into the hands of 
the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust. And will 
counsel for the wily plaintiff say that, facing star- 
vation, our wage-producers, if they desired to get 
back their jobs which then would be in the 
possession of foreign wage-producers all over the 
world, would not be compelled to work at wage- 
20? What in the world would force wages back 
to their former level here but a new tariff-dike 
which would shut out the deluge of foreign sur- 
plus products and so reduce the supply of labor 
to the size of the demand here? 

Your Honors, we appeal to you whether or not, 
under the circumstances we have described, or 
even if the outside world would not work for less 
than wage-90 instead of wage-20, there would be 
any way to prevent our own wages falling to wage- 
90, except the erection of a dike damming out 
wage-90 products. 

After all, your Honors, the dike, is merely a 
coffer-dam in the great world-wide s'ea within which 
our own people can labor, so that wages and prices 
may be fixed by the ratio of local supply to local 
demand, without reference to the outside world. 
SAveep away the dike or the coffer-dam and our 
wages become a part of the one confluent sea which 
seeks the same level the world around; and we 
would eventually be forced down with the rest of 
the world to about wage-20. 

And wage-20 in our latitudes would not sus- 
tain life. 



229 

We think, your Honors, that, whatever counsel 
for the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust may 
pretend to the contrary, we have convinced him 
that the wage-producers of this country have noth- 
ing to say against the "trusts" selling more cheap- 
ly abroad than at home. We think he will agree 
with us that, if the "trusts" get higher prices here 
than they get abroad, the workers or wage-produ- 
cers, or in the language of the learned counsel for 
the wily plaintiff, the "consumers," get wages as 
much higher than the wages they could get abroad 
as the "trusts" get prices higher than they get 
abroad; and that, if it is wrong for the "trusts" 
to get higher prices at home than they get abroad, 
it is equally wrong for the "consumers" to get 
higher wages at home than they can get abroad. 
And if the tariff -dike prevents competition from 
abroad in our markets' and enables the "trusts" to 
get prices from the "consumers" higher than prices 
abroad, the same tariff-dike prevents competition 
in our market from foreign labor and enables the 
"consumers" to get wages higher than they could 
get abroad. But, your Honors, why should coun- 
sel for the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, be 
thus partial in his championship? Why should 
he be more indignant because our "trusts" sell 
more cheaply abroad than he is because all other 
countries "trusts" sell more cheaply in our mar- 
ket here than they do in their own domestic mar- 
kets? For that is what they do all around the 
ring, your Honors. Is it not tit for tat, your 
Honors, and is it not right that, when these for- 
eign "trusts" attacking the home market of our 
"trusts" with lower prices than the foreign 
"trusts" get at home, our "trusts" should balance 
the account by attacking the home markets of 



230 

these foreign ^'trusts" Avith lower prices than our 
"trusts'' get at home? 

It strikes us, jour Honors, that the entire ar- 
gument of counsel for the wily plaintiff, the Im- 
porting Trust about the high prices of our 
"trusts" is weak. Who are these so-called "trusts," 
your Honors? Simply the whole force of Ameri- 
can Production. Together they make up the en- 
tire fabric of industrial activity in this country. 
For it should be remembered that the word "trust" 
employed in the sense intended by the Importing 
Trust has no application to any particular in- 
dustry in this country. The term is one of odium 
selected by the Importing Trust by which to brand 
every xlmerican industry whose competition it 
fears. It is applied without discrimination to any 
branch of American Production which the Import- 
ing Trust particularly wishes to destroy. The 
"trusts" are American Production, and American 
Production is simply the whole active busines-s 
and industrial country. Therefore, when the Im- 
porting Trust accuses the "trusts" of raising 
prices, it accuses all the industries in the country 
of raising prices; and the inference is that prices 
are raised arbitrarily from pure "greed" as the Im- 
porting Trust describes the asking of a profit on 
the part of any block of American capital. Now, 
your Honors', we repeat that this rise in price has 
been a general one; and we inquire whether or 
not it is sensible to suppose that the American 
"trusts" have raised prices merely for fun of pay- 
ing the high prices themselves. For all prices" have 
risen; and the "trusts," in their various branches 
of Avork, are obliged to pay these very prices them- 
selves for the materials they buy to make up into 
their own sorts of goods; and among these ma- 



231 

terials so raised in price is the most costly 
material whicli goes into goods, viz., human labor. 

A's a maatter of fact, your Honors, those who 
have any business experience at all know that the 
.ast thing any American producer wants to see is 
a rise in prices. That means a fall in sales and 
a corresponding fall in profits. In competition 
throughout this great country, a rise in the price 
of any article, whether of food for the wage-produ- 
cer or material for the property-producer, brings 
uncertainty and perplexity for the property-pro- 
ducer. He does not know how his comeptitors are 
going to deal with the matter in order to balance 
the increased cost of producing without handicap- 
ping their goods' with a higher price in the market. 
Instead of being the fiends who make prices high, 
your Honors, our "trusts" are timorous spirits to 
whom high prices are vicious demons. 

You all know, your Honors, how the wily plain- 
tiff, the Importing Trust, breathes discontent into 
the hearts of our wage-producers by showing sched- 
ules of prices which have risen while wages have 
been rising, and saying that the rise in prices more 
than balances the rise in wages and that the wage- 
producer, if he had to pay merely the old prices, 
would be better off with his lower wages. Your 
Honors, this is one of the most cruel things to 
which the Importing Trust is driven in its struggle 
to block American Production. Its argument is 
a cheat. It quotes the percentage of increase in 
wages and over against it the increase in prices; 
and because one percentage is greater than the 
other, tries to make the wage-producer think he 
is being made poor by the higher prices. The 
trick of which the Importing Trust is guilty in 
this move would hardly do credit to a patent- 



232 

medicine vender under his smoking torch in a pub- 
lic square. The hole in the cheese is in the fact 
that the wages at their higher rate apply for every 
hour in the day and for every possible working 
day in the year; whereas the higher rate for food 
applies only to three meals a day for no more 
days at the higher wages than at the lower; and 
the higher rate for clothing applies merely to two 
or three suits a year; and the higher rent only to 
the same shelter that was necessary at the lower 
wages and the shorter time. In other words, your 
Honors, the same items* being considered, from the 
year's total earnings deduct the year's total ex- 
penses, and you are left with a very much larger 
balance for the savings bank or for comforts, than 
you were left with when the old prices were de- 
ducted from the old wages. It is' a very cheap 
trick, your Honors, which the Importing Trust 
shows us here. And a further proof of its wicked- 
ness is the fact that our savings banks' now hold 
nearlv four billions of dollars saved by people 
working at the wages brought by the mended dike ; 
and the flood of savings is still pouring into the 
banks all ready to flow backwards into the hands 
of the Importing Trust when it succeeds with dike 
"revision." 

Your Honors, we know that the wily plaintiff, 
the Importinsj Trust, has* a favorite spear which 
knows no brother in saying that, if you shut the 
country up with a very high-tariff dike, you aban- 
don nil our people to the rapacity — we believe the 
word is "rapacity," your Honors — to the "rapacity" 
of the "trusts," because they have already throt- 
tled competition and are "screwing up" — atif- 
schrayhen, we believe the Staats Zeitung says, 
obeying tlie (rorman steamship lines and attack- 



233 

ing our dike — at any rate, are "screwing up" the 
prices and "exacting" and "extorting" and a lot 
of other horrid things from the American people. 
In the first place, your Honors, if the "trusts" 
are breaking any law, they should be restrained. 
But if they are merely selling their own property 
at their own prices, the same as you and we would 
do, your Honors, these people who are thus at- 
tacking them should be punished for sedition and 
conspiracy. For we should never forget, your 
Honors', that we are all poor creatures who have, 
at the very best, but very weak if not wicked stores 
of brain-cells and that the "trusts" are no more 
likely to get our money by making prices too high 
than we are to get the "trusts' " money by making 
prices too low. The law is there to determine this 
very thing, viz., whether the "trusts" are trying 
to filch our property or we are trying to filch the 
"trusts' " property. The "trusts" are just as good 
and no better than we are. We are just as bad 
and no worse than they are. When it comes to 
talking of "greed," "voracity," "extorting," "ex- 
acting," and such things, honors are easy. Now 
it seems to us, your Honors, that, under these cir- 
cumstances, we and the "trusts" might better call 
it a standoff. That is, we might better let the 
"trusts" alone to deal with their property in the 
way the law allows and not cry out "extortionist" 
when it figures out that, to come out even, it will 
have to get a little more money for its goods to- 
day, with its running expenses higher, than it did 
yesterday, before the rise in their expense account; 
and we will pay their prices or not as we please; 
and we dare say that, in exchange for this cour- 
tesy on our part, the "trusts" will be quite willing 
for us to fix our own price on iroods we sell to 



234 

them, which they will pay or not as they please. 
For, your Honors, we each have the privilege of 
buying the other's goods or leaving them. If w^e 
don't want their goods at their price and they will 
not sell at our offer, we can leave the goods in 
their store; and if they don't want our goods at 
our price and we will not sell at their offer, they 
can leave the goods in our store. There are plenty 
of other stores' for us and for them to buy goods 
in, the Importing Trust and its list of American 
"trusts" and "combinations" to the contrary not- 
withstanding. Do you know what your Honors? 
This country Avould be overturned in a minute by 
a dollar watch if the prices of the "trusts" were 
not prices we could refuse to pay and still live 
and be good citizens and not common hoodlums, 
by loud bawling trying to get somebody else's pro- 
fit. 

The fact that we worry along so prosperously, 
fill the savings baks so full of our savings, and our 
stomachs so full of sirloin steak, is i^roof that we 
who vilif}^ the "trusts" because they ask a price 
which makes it as profitable for them to sell as 
for us to buy, have a bad case of itching palm. 
We need a change of heart and a dose of the Ten 
Commandments; or we ought some day to land in 
jail. 

Now, your Honors, one more word on this head. 
The only respectable criterion of whether the 
"trusts" or we are robbing somebody is the law 
of the land. Before we howl about the "trusts" 
robbing us, Ave might better go to the law in the 
case and see whether, in the penal code, what the 
"trusts" are doing is described as "robbery." If 
if is', we should file our complaint with the dis- 
trict attorney and furnish him proofs. Then the 



235 

"trusts" can be punished in due course. The law 
will test the question and classify the doings of 
the "trusts'" as they deserve. But if, while the 
penal code contains nothing which condemns their 
doings, we, without making any orderly complaint 
at all, go up and down the land roaring out against 
"predatory wealth," "malefactors of great wealth," 
and "bad corporations," charging the "trusts" with 
"extorting" and "exacting" things which they have 
no right to, we convict ourselves of manufactur- 
ing crimes' to fit those whom we wish to destroy 
in the public mind, of playing the cheapest kind 
of politics, and, generally, of such conduct as ex- 
poses us to the suspicion of meaning to blackmail 
the "trusts." Especially is this true, if, occupying 
any position of power, we have it within our reach, 
by means which will not drag us into the matter, 
to persecute "trusts" who refuse to be "touched." 

Your Honors, the wily plaintiff, the Importing 
Trust, says that but for foreign competition, the 
kind that lines the pockets of the Importing Trust, 
all the producers in this country would unite in 
a gTeat big "trust" and choke us all to death with 
high prices. That sounds either like what some fel- 
low says who either knows nothing about business 
or who thinks those he says it to know nothing about 
business. But, your Honors', those who know about 
business and speak to others also supposed to 
know about business, say it is not because the 
"trusts" want to raise prices that they are form- 
ed — the "trusts" are merely large corporations, 
your Honors, usually made by consolidating two 
or more smaller ones — it is not because the "trusts" 
want to raise prices' that they are formed, but be- 
cause prices want to raise them so high that they 
would be a total loss if they rose. In other words, 



236 

"trusts" are not formed until, from competition, 
conditions are such that it is only by consolida- 
tion and the reduction of expenses by the eco- 
nomies* which come from buying and selling in the 
gross, that they can put out goods at prices low 
enough to keep them in business. So that the exist- 
ence of "trusts," your Honors, is a sign of economy 
and of the fact that the public is getting the goods 
of the "trusts" cheaper than before the "trusts" 
were formed. This fact is notoriously true of the 
celebrated Standard Oil Company. Their pro- 
ducts are retailed at prices but a fraction of what 
they were before this tremendous system was form- 
ed and all its thousand economies effected. Kero- 
sene selling from 12 to 16 cents a gallon should 
make any one blush to "kick" at the Standard 
Oil Company as a monopolist. Its product is 
carried hundreds of miles, highly refined, and then 
sold to the consumer at a lower price per gallon 
than milk, which the farmer a mile away brings 
you daily. 

In our consideration of the "trusts," there is 
one thing to be remembered, your Honors, and 
that is that the great majority of them are very 
conservative business institutions and that they 
represent capital secured by bonds' which must 
earn interest, and stock upon which dividends 
should be paid ; and that they are limited to those 
methods which give the surest returns both to the 
bondholder and the stockholder. Now, your 
Honors, to secure a proper return for these ob- 
jects, besides a sinking fund for betterments and 
repairs, these "trusts" require that their hold on 
the market shall be steady. Knowing this and 
what it means to pass dividends or default inter- 
est, these "trusts" have a sort of horror for shrink- 



237 

ages in sales; and the thing most likely to shrink 
sales is a higher price, which often means a shrink- 
age in sales out of all proportion to the increase 
in price. Perhaps there is nothing more unjust 
than to charge the "trusts" with arbitrarily rais- 
ing prices'. For prices are never raised, except 
from necessity, arising from increased cost of ma- 
terials, labor, or running expenses; or, under ex- 
traordinary circumstances in which demand un- 
reasonably and perhaps speculatively outruns sup- 
ply, to check sales and preserve stocks for regular 
trade. In order to bring proper returns on the 
great body of capital tied up in their busines*s, 
above all things the "trusts" need stability and 
reliability of income; and these things never could 
be secured by constantly sharpshooting with the 
public in the matter of prices. 

Your Honors, we should not forget one thing 
which works against the voluntary making of high 
prices by the "trusts" ; and that is that prices which 
leave an extraordinary margin for "trust" divi- 
dends', cause competition and the loss of some por- 
tion of the regular trade, so necessary to the peace 
of mind of the "trusts," in the manner just de- 
scribed. 

What does counsel for the wily plaintiff, the Im- 
porting Trust, say, your Honors? That with the 
tariff -dike raised high the American "trusts" throt- 
tle competition within the country by freezing out 
the small fry and buying in the large fry among 
thier competitors, and then fix prices to suit them- 
selves? It seems, your Honors, that counsel for 
the wily plaintiff will not take our theory of the 
deadly effect which high prices' have upon the in- 
come of the "trusts." Then, your Honors, we re- 
ply that the result he speaks of has never yet fol- 



238 

lowed; and we have been having protective tariff- 
dikes in this country for a hundred years and more. 
It is not true to-day, that in any branch of produc- 
tion, the "trusts'- have played the octopus. Every 
"trust'' in this country now has strong competition 
in the shape of effective plants entirely beyond its 
control and ready to take advantage of any mistake 
it makes either in production or in marketing its' 
product. If the "trusts" were making a greater 
profit than they ought to make, these independent 
competitors w^ould jump in and force the "trusts" 
to divide profits with them and the public. 

There is another fact, your Honors, which the 
wily plaintiff tries hard to keep in the shade; and 
that is that the tariff-dike is a great importer of 
foreign capital, if not a great importer of foreign 
goods. For you all know that there is no tariff 
on capital, on the one hand, or on labor on the other. 
The only thing the tariff-dike requires is that capi- 
tal doing the work of the country shall largely do 
its work within the country and employ the labor 
found in the country. That is, that a fair share of 
the property-production for the country should help 
wage-production within the country. But this 
market, thus partially protected — for it is by no 
means fully protected, as our rising imports prove 
— is like a blackberry bush loaded with blackber- 
ries, such as we found in the pastures w^hen we were 
boys; and as we boys all flocked to the same bush 
to get all the berries we could before they were 
gone, so both capital and labor, the one anxious to 
benefit by partinlly-protected prices, the other by 
partially-protected wages, come flying into this 
country to produce property on the one hand and 
wn2:es on the other. But capital comes faster than 
lal)or, and by the competition of the inflowing capi- 



239 

tal ^'tlie trusts-^ are forced to lower prices much 
faster than labor, by the inflowiug tide of immigra- 
tion, is forced to lower wages. AVhy, your Honors, 
capital has come in so fast in this way and has 
bucked the "trusts" — just American Production, 
3^our Honors — so strongly that it is startling to see 
how in this country prices of all manufactured 
things have fallen in the last fifty years. Formerly 
England was a monopolist of our market here in a 
thousand articles; and she charged us very high 
prices ; but the tariff -dike brought capital in so fast 
and the competition between American plants was 
so sharp that now-a-days, except to a limited extent, 
England cannot sell here the kind of goods which 
have been long protected by the dike, because the 
cost of passing the dike cuts off her profit. On the 
other hand our wages have risen very much over 
what they w^re when England ruled our market; 
because the immigration of labor is comparatively 
slow and the increasing demand for labor from im- 
migrant capital has more than absorbed the immi- 
grant labor supply. Counsel for the wily plaintiff, 
the Importing Trust, may laugh as he pleases and 
say, in his stage whisper, "Prices' fall and wages 
rise, what a miracle!'' But it is no miracle, your 
Honors; it is merely from the fact that the tariff- 
dike makes such strong competition here that prop- 
erty-producers bid against each other on the one 
hand for labor, and so increase wages; and on the 
oth«r hand for customers, and so reduce prices. 
And, as w^e have often said before, this process wdll 
keep on, your Honors, and w^ould go on much faster 
with a dike which, unlike the Dingley fiasco, really 
protected the market as a whole. But the good 
work w^ill go on, if the Dingley dike is not "revised'^ 
downward but gradually built upward, until prop- 



240 

ertj'prodtucers have divided b'etweeu the public 
and the wage-producers the last cent but the one 
necessary to keep property-producers here still in 
business. And there is one thing to take special 
note of, your Honors; and that is that this immi- 
grant capital becomes fixed here in plants represent- 
ing thousands of millions' of dollars; and, in order 
to save it, the property -producers will not run away 
as long as the tariff-dike returns the cost of their 
materials and labor in this market, together with 
as great an interest on their invested capital as they 
could get abroad. For, they will stand by their 
guns as long as their plants can be saved as going 
concerns at a value greater than the loss they suf- 
fer from low prices and high wages. But "revise'^ 
the dike downwards, expose them to competition 
with cost-20 from abroad as asrainst cost-100 at 
home, and the loss of their capital fixed in plants 
will be small as compared with the loss of their 
fluent capital; and they will abandon their plants, 
gather their fluent capital, fly to lands of cost-20, 
go into business there and send their wares back 
here. 

But, your Honors, it does not seem to us rational 
that our people should overlook the fact lying right 
before their eyes, that the tariff-dike, not shutting 
out capital but shutting out goods, is the greatest 
possible importer of capital, such importation being 
directly in proportion to the effectiveness of the 
dilie in protecting our home market from foreign 
competition; and that, in this way, the tariff-dike 
offsets its crime of being "the mother of Trusts," 
and so far as opportunity to "extort" and "exact" 
high prices is concerned leaves the "trusts" in no 
better shape than they were before. Isn't it singu- 
lar, your Honors, that, if it is real honest in want- 



241 

ing our "trusts" to have plenty of competition, the 
wily plaintilf should so hate our innocent dike? 
Why, your Honors, with a high-tarift' dilie, our 
"trusts" are sure to have competition with all the 
unfixed capital in the world, down to the level of 
prices where our property-producers work without 
salaries and merely get the world-rate of interest 
on their plants'. Then, where is the trouble and 
what is it that torments the wily plaintilf so? Sim- 
ply here, your Honors, that the dike strains out the 
most of the goods made abroad and lets only capital 
come freely through. If the capital alone comes 
through, the competition with our "trusts" is as 
great ; but in that case the commissions of the wily 
plaintiff are left asoak in the sea of foreign surplus 
products outside the dike and never find their way 
to its strong box. Just a little inspection shows 
that, as all roads led to Eome in olden times, all 
execrations upon the heads of the "trusts" no mat- 
ter how the evil thought is disguised, lead to com- 
missions in the pocket of the wily plaintiff. 

When all is said and done, your Honors, there is 
a certain vulgar lawlessness in all this sitting in 
judgment on the question of whether somebody is 
charging too high prices. We think we have shown 
you where it comes in from the point of view of 
legal right. But when it is placed under the examin- 
ing glass of cold business analysis, to cry down an- 
other's prices on the ground that that other is "ex- 
torting" and "exacting" a higher price than he 
should, proves to be simply howling to make some- 
body give up a portion of his profit to the one mak- 
ing the kick. Because, your Honors, nobody would 
buy anything at all, if he did not think it would 
be more profitable for him to buy it than not. For 
in order to make a trade, two minds must meet — 



242 

tliat of the buyer with that of the seller. The price 
fixed between them must be that at which it is' more 
profitable for the buyer to purchase than not; and 
at which it is more profitable for the seller to sell 
than not. Each party must be the judge as to 
whether the trade will profit him. Now the fact 
that goods at a given price, whether called high or 
low, are currently salable, is proof that those who 
buy are buying at a price which profits them; and 
if that be the case, when a person sets up a howl 
at a certain price because he thinks it high, and it 
is yet the price at which the goods currently sell, 
what he is trying to do, your Honors, but scare the 
seller out of his profits? We think this is a correct 
analysis of the whole situation, your Honors. The 
only test of whether a price is too high is whether it 
is so high that the seller can't sell, there being in 
the trade at that price no profit for the buyer. And 
when the price reaches that point, the final glut of 
goods in the market will make the price tumble. 
Goods are worth what they will bring. To com- 
plain that prices are too high is to plead the baby 
act. The fact that you buy them proves that they 
are not too high for you. It amounts to this, your 
Honors, that when any fellow cries out against the 
"trusts" because of their high prices, he is merely 
trying to get the public to increase his private 
profits by frightening the other fellow out of a part 
of his. 

And it is just so with regard to all persons or 
organizations who, to smash prices, are rooting for 
tariff "revision'' ; they are only trying to make the 
public grind their private axes. For they are mak- 
ing a good profit already ; or there would be no cur- 
rent market price of the sort they are raving about; 
but they want the other fellow to lower his price 



243 

in order that their own may be raised. That, in 
a pint measure, is the whole philosophy of the rage 
about "extortions" and "exactions" on the part of 
the "trusts." 

Your Honors, there is another question we must 
ask in passing. Why do not all our clergymen, 
our philanthropists, and our honest political econo- 
mists throAV away all their other plans for the better 
distribution of wealth and stand for work at liv- 
ing wages; and to that end root like sensible men 
for a dike so high that the last pennyworth of work 
to be done for our people here shall be done by our 
own wage-producers? Why, your Honors, in the 
way we have said, from competition of capital with 
capital for the market on the one hand, and for 
labor on the other, prices or cost of living will fall, 
and wages, or the means of living, will rise, until 
practically, in proportion to their work, the entire 
product of the country will be distributed among 
our workers. Would not this secure that wide dis- 
tribution of wealth, your Honors, for which all 
these good men sigh, and weep, and pray? What 
other channel is there but work through which 
wealth can be thus distributed? If it were distrib- 
uted arbitrarily it would not stay put, but would 
find its way back again into the hands of "certain 
malefactors of great wealth," who have been born 
with the faculty of making and keeping money. 
But when people get money by work, they at least 
liave some idea of its value. And with such a sys- 
tem as we suggest, confining all our country's 
work to our country's workers, more and more of 
our people, from decade to decade, would become 
educated in the management of money and by de- 
grees we would become a practically homogeneous 
people, where everybody would be well-fed, well- 



2U 

clothed, well-ho,used ^anci! we(ll-entertained, and 
diverted from the sorrows and cares of life, but 
where nobody could live without work, because peo- 
ple would be all so well to do that each would have 
to work for himself, and there would be no loafers 
and lazybones on the one hand or servants and 
human chattels on the other. 

Break your dike, compel us with cost-100 to com- 
pete with cost-20 and fall to the sea-level of wide- 
world service, and the rich among us would become 
richer and the poor poorer, until all our land had 
been left with a few grandees who, like the feudal 
lords of old in their castles, would practically own 
the poor. But build your dike to heaven ; shut out 
the degradation contained in goods the price of 
which does not return to the worker the fibre that 
he loses in his work, and your rich will become 
poorer and your poor richer, until wealth has been 
evenly distributed throughout your whole popula- 
tion and there are no 400 rotting in wealth at the 
top, and no million rotting with poverty at the bot- 
tom; but all are a brotherhood equal in bodies, 
minds, souls, and estates. 

Another thing, your Honors, with regard to the 
civilizing effect of opportunities to work. We ap- 
peal to the followers of the gentle man of Galilee to 
help us baffle the powers of darkness which these 
wily plaintiffs have so many times let loose upon 
us and which by means of tariff dike "revision'^ 
they are trying to let loose upon us once more. For 
nearly two thousand years the Christian clergy 
have been preaching, and, to a reasonable extent, 
practicing the example of the lowly Nazarene in 
doing good to those that curse them and despite- 
fully use and persecute them. But something has 
been lacking in the program. After all this long 



245 

time the world is no better than ever it was before. 
There are more heathen in the United States to the 
acre than there are in darkest Africa. The trouble 
is that all this talking, talking, talking ends only in 
talking. What we need is good habits. Good talk 
is too cheap altogether. Good habits are the most 
valuable things in the world. And good habits can 
only come from pl-enty of well paid work. And 
it seems to us that we remember hearing somewhere 
in our wanderings an expression something like 
this: ^^Faith without work is dead.'' We do not 
suppose au}^ of the essay-readers in the pulpits will 
agree with us that w^e heard it in just this form. 
But the form is all right. Faith without work is 
worse than unborn. It is work that makes habit. 
And if it is good work it makes good habit. If the 
Christian ministers' could only g'^et it into their 
heads that there is more sound conversion in an 
hour's well-paid work honestly done than in a year's 
sermonizing, they would be on the road to some- 
thing better for humanity than tent-meeting re- 
vivals and collections for the missionary field. 

Some of these good gentlemen are getting some- 
thing in their heads at any rate. They are begin- 
ing to feel that there is a screw loose somewhere. 
For instance, a few days ago Bishop Ingram of Lon- 
don, then at Trinity Church in New York City, said 
this : 



"Have you ever thought why there are any rich and 
poor at all? That Is the question I have had to face 
in London. They have asked me how I reconciled the 
helief in the good God loving all his children with the 
wretched million in East London who seem abandoned 
by both God and man. I had to face that question and 
I have had to face it ever since. There is but one answer 
— the rich minority have what they have merely in trust 
for all the others. Stewardship, not ownership, is God's 
command to every one of us." 



246 

This good man felt there was a screw loose some- 
Avhere, but he put his finger on the wrong screw. 
Ownership is ownership, not ^^stewardship." The 
decent poor do not ask alms, but work. 

And here is another good fellow hunting for that 
same screw. It is Eev. Johnston Myers, pastor of 
the Immanuel Baptist Church in Chicago. He 
says : 

** Sermons and discourses from the pulpit belong to the 
passing order; they are out of date. Like the crusades, 
they have had their day in the religious world and now 
must give way before a new era in the manner of getting 
people into close association with the church. * * * 
Mere preaching ceases to hold a large place in the work 
of the church nowadays. People are tired of it. * * * 
This is not the age of the sermon. Ours is the age of 
personal work. * * * The real reason sermons are 
going out is because we fail to get definite results from 
the sermon. * * * I do not know of a single member 
of the church made through the conversions of "Gypsy" 
Smith, who held a revival here last winter. The soul- 
winning of the Twentieth Century must be by personal 
work." 

And he missed the screw, too; but by a narrow 
margin. If he had meant "personal work" done by 
and not for the sinner, and had said, "The soul-win- 
ing of the Twentieth Century must be by giving the 
sinner plenty of well-paid work," he would have 
gotten his grip on the very screw to blame. 

Well, your Honors, here is the point: Why is 
not a high-tariff dike the best means of converting 
the United States to honesty, temperance and broth- 
erly love? Why, your Honors, wickedness flows 
from brain-cells which were arranged in accordance 
with a certain environment, and wherever that cer- 
tain environment is present that same arrange- 
ment of brain-cells follows, and we say the 
man is wicked. But make such an environment 
that the wicked arrangement of brain-cells does 
not follow, and the same man is said to be good. 



247 

Now the environment necessary to correct an ar- 
rangement of brain-cells which makes a man steal, 
is one where it is just as easy and at least as 
safe to work as to steal. People who steal be- 
cause they love stealing are very very few com- 
pared with those who steal because they have to 
in order to live. Now from our long observation 
of the tariff-dike, we believe that the higher your 
dike the lower your tide of crime; and the lower 
your dike, the higher that same tide. It is plain 
to see why this* is so. Dike out of the country 
work already done in the form of goods, and your 
balance of work needing to be done in the coun- 
try is larger. There are more jobs for our work- 
ers and Satan does not find so much mischief 
still for idle hands to do; but on the contrary the 
workers find more ways' to earn a living than to 
steal it, and they earn it. Men love life more than 
laws and when laws get in the way of life they 
get broken. No laws would get in the way of life 
if honest labor were quite as well rewarded as 
necessary crime. Make crime unnecessary to life 
and it will naturally fall off. Now, your Honors, 
it ma3" be that if all the jobs necessary to be done 
for us were divided among us somebody would 
still be without a job; but if only a part of the 
jobs necssary to keep us were divided among us 
and the rest were divided among job-hunters 
abroad, as the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, 
wishes, it is certain that many of our workers 
would be without jobs, and more stealing would 
be necessary. Therefore, we repeat, the ther- 
mometer of crime in this country should fall with 
a high dike and rise with a low one. Now, your, 
Honors, if our Christian ministers would but join 
us against the Importing Trust, one of the wily 



248 

plaintiffs herein, we feel certain that, at last, they 
would be on the right track. Prayer is a good 
thing in its way, your Honors, but it is' a pretty 
poor way to form good habits, which simply mean 
an arrangement of brain-cells making our actions 
auto^matically good; and, in making good habits, 
dike-building would beat praying to death. It is 
our firm conviction, your Honors, that if all the 
jobs necessary to be done for us were distributed 
among us every day, there would be enough to 
go ^round handsomely; and that if this process 
were repeated from now on forever, the people 
of this country would all finally become so good 
from the removal of temptation and the substi- 
tution of honest habits for dishonest ones, that 
all any of our brotherhood would need to get past 
St. Peter at the gate, would be his American citi- 
zenship papers. 

Your Honors, this matter of morality in the 
tariff-dike seems so important to us that we can- 
not leave it without rubbing it in well. It seems 
to US' that it points to all that is necessary to be 
done to reform us all and to solve every problem 
of commercialism and socialism we shall ever dis- 
cover. Why, look, your Honors, how work along 
our pet line would put these wily plaintiffs and 
the socialists' out of business! 

On the one hand, the old-line socialists say that 
by some contrivance, all the wealth of the coun- 
try should be automatically shared equally by the 
whole people. On the other hand the wily plain- 
tiffs say that we need no tariff dike, because we 
have such a lovely climate, such a heap of rap- 
turous soil, such "natural wealth'^ and such an 
ecstatic genius for making the most of it. It is 
the soil anrl these other jokers that give us the 



249 

trick. It is these dead things that, almost against 
our will, have made us great; and they will give 
us "the markets of the world" without a tariff- 
dike and we shall all be happy. But we say 
your Honors, that our old-line socialists and these 
wily plaintiffs are both wrong. It is not the soil 
that has made us great or its equal division 
among us that will make us greater still. Soil is 
nothing; sky is nothing; rain and shine are 
nothing; free division is nothing, unless a man 
will dig. And we believe in making it an object 
for him to dig. We believe in conjuring a coin 
at the end of every shovelful; but we would make 
it impossible for him to get the coin unless he 
dug. We are not the other sort of a socialist 
with his equal division and his premium on shirk- 
ing. Men should dig; but we would make digging 
a hopeful proposition by a sky-high-dike, with its 
coin at the bottom of every digging; and, having 
done that, the order of life should be "Dig!'' If 
we want to perpetuate this Kepublic, we must dig, 
every mother's' son of us. That is what makes 
mind and muscle healthy; and nature's law is 
"Dig or die !" But the difference between digging 
with a sky-high dike and digging with no dike at 
all would be this: With the dike, we would dig 
or die. Without it, we would dig and die. Dig- 
ging with a coin at the end of the digging would 
make us all happy; and that means a good deal; 
for although some say, "Be good and you will 
be happy," we say, "Be happy and you will be 
good." We add, "Give men good work, and they 
will be both happy and good." For without re- 
gard to "race, color, or previous condition of" 
want and desperation, the very great majority of 
men, including women, prefer hard work to kill- 



250 

ing and robbing. It is safer and saner. It means 
longer life and greater enjoyment of its sweets. 
Men are natural Epicureans. They want the 
greatest enjoyment possible to the square minute. 
And being a hunted robber or assasin does not 
fill the bill. We believe this to be the universal 
feeling. What men want first of all is good work. 
A number of years ago the London workless poor 
formed a great procession, and, tens of thousands 
strong, marched through the streets, in all their 
poverty and rags, hunger and hopelessness, to 
give the English Importing Trust an object les- 
son in the sort of goods that its raids' on the Eng- 
lish work-supply were turning out from year 
to year. The Importing Trust, heard that these 
poor men and women, so grievously defrauded of 
their natural rights, were going to make a demon- 
stration, and some of its wealthy members said, 
"Lo, there are such hard times in London, we 
must give these people alms." But what reply 
did these people make? Did they cry for the 
blood of those who had sold them out of the hope 
of life? Did they scream, "Down with the Im- 
porting Trust ! Death to the rich !" No, bless their 
true hearts! they simply inscribed on their ban- 
ners, ^^We do not ask alms. We demand w^ork!'^ 
Was not that grand! They merely asked to have 
restored to them their right to work, — to work 
for Enolishraen. They were true to Anglo-Saxon 
iusitincts. They would rather work than beg, bor- 
row, or steal. If these people were made happy 
with work, they would be good. Some of us are 
pretty bad. We inherited it. Our fathers' were 
bad; thev inherited it. Their fathers were bad; 
they Avould lie and cheat and kill and rob; and 
thov became^ bad because it was be ibad or be 



251 

dead; and coffins did not appeal to them. But 
the Importing Trust in one country or another — 
for all countries have Importing Trusts — went 
on selling so much domestic work at auction 
among outside peoples' that our wretched grand- 
sires never could struggle to their honest feet. 
So they got the habit; and their dishonest feet 
did the most business. And so some of us, as we 
have said, are even now pretty bad. Some of us 
ought to be hung and others jailed for life, in or- 
der that good people may not be endangered by 
us. That is the way of the world. Now many of 
us have brain-cells all arranged for badness; and 
goodness would be a hard proposition for us. But 
in time the proper environment would rearrange 
our brain-cells in the line with what people now 
call "goodness," or "righteousness," as Mr. Roose- 
velt calls it. Now, make this proper environment; 
soak the land full of good work by putting the 
Avily plaintiff, the Importing Trust out of com- 
mission; and by sending the wily plaintiff, the 
Exporting Trust, to the rear; crowd it full of do- 
mestic products, good things to eat and drink and 
wear, all awaiting us, at the lowest prices pos- 
sible to our level of latitude and life, and we 
real bad ones would begin to work some of the 
time, even if we stole the rest of the time. Our 
children might still steal some of the time, but 
they would work most of the time. And ten to 
one our children's children would work all the 
time and steal none of the time and perhaps for- 
get the art of stealing. Then the good work 
would have been accomplished. The steady pull 
of an environment that tied honest work fast to 
the good things of life would have been the mas- 
ter, and our brain-cells would be found all right 



252 

and we would be "happy all the day." Your Hon- 
ors, put these wily plaintiffs in chains for a cen- 
tury; crack the back of foreign trade; give us 
the chance to do all our own work ourselves; to 
make all we have and have all we make; and we 
could celebrate our centennial of freedom from 
these wily plaintiffs by burning all our churches 
and schoolhouses; for they never would be missed; 
because by that time having plenty of good work 
would have made our people so happy and hence 
so good and so wise that to send them either to 
church or to school would be to insult their good- 
ness and their wisdom. 

Yes, your Honors, we suspected counsel for the 
wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, would have 
something to say just about now; and he says 
that our delightful little digression over the whole 
of Christian conduct from Palestine to the Golden 
Gate of St. Peter, has nothing to do with the case ; 
and the fact still is that, with the tariff-dike keep- 
ing foreign surplus products from competing 
with our "trusts,'' no matter how much capital 
came into the country, it would all have to join 
the "trusts" or be put out of business; and the 
"trusts" would collect from the people by high 
prices what it cost the "trusts" to buy up this 
foreign competition. Your Honors, it would take 
a power of monev to buy up the world's unfixed 
capital, rolling in here to share our market with 
the "trusts." That same kind of capital would 
keep right on accumulating in the world at large; 
and the world at large is a pretty large world. 
Even if our "trusts" represented all the capital 
in this country, which they don't, by a long shot, 
how could the capital of this countn% from now 
on, buy into silence all the unfixed capital of the 



253 

rest of the world? For, if profits were too large 
here, in order for counsel for the wily plaintiff 
to ring true in his statement, that is what our 
capital would have to do. 

At any rate, your Honors, for a "trust" to buy 
up competitors is to add just so much to the cost 
of its plant; and the ways in which the "trusts** 
can get interest back on such an investment are 
just two : First, by making the plant purchased 
or the capital absorbed work and earn its own 
dividends; second, by leaving it idle and raising 
the price of present output to cover returns for 
idle capital. In the first case, to increase supply 
without increasing demand is to depress price, in 
the interest of the public. In the second case, to 
increase price is to handicap the "trust" plant in 
its quarrel with competitors who have not bought 
up competition to the same extent. The absorbed 
plant or capital becomes a dead weight on the 
back of the "trusts." And buying up competi- 
tion once all around would not end it. In fact, 
its end would not be in sight. "Buying up com- 
petition," to be successful, would have to continue 
the Iiandicap to the advantage of competitors 
which would become larger and larger all the 
while. In short, your Honors, those who know 
anything about this trick of "buying up competi- 
tion" know that it is suicide for ho7ia fide indus- 
try and that the only ones who ever benefit by it 
are promoters who dazzle the public with pros- 
pectuses', sell out their stock, and stand from un- 
der the crash. As a matter of fact, your Honors, 
all this Importing- Trust talk about the "extor- 
tions" and "exactions" of the "trusts" are mere 
devils' dreams for the frightening of votes' into 
the box of the Importing-Trust presidential and 



254 

congressioual candidates. There are no "trusts" 
in this country of the nature and power described 
by the Importing Trust. They are bugaboos' in- 
vented with an eye single to the monoply of our 
market by goods of the Importing Trust. All the 
yarns of their extortions, of their combinations, 
of their nefarious naughtiness, and of their satanic 
power, are pure hobgoblin tales. The public not 
only has never been harmed by these "trusts" but 
there is not a single instance where a "trust" has 
laid hold of a large section of trade, systematized 
its production and the distribution of its pro- 
duct, and enforced the economies within the power 
of large capital, by which the public has* not been 
benefited by lower and steadier prices, a more re- 
liable supply and a more regular distribution. 
As to Avhat dividends these "trusts" earn, it is 
none of the public's business. If the public don^t 
like the prices it pays, it can build a "trust" itself 
bigger than any "trust" ever built here yet, and 
have the product for the bare cost of production. 
Thus to compete in any field is a privilege of this 
free country where there are no goverament 
monoplies . And as to what profits these "trusts" 
make, that will be none of the public's business 
just as long as we have a constitution which as- 
sures us all the equal protection of the laws, and 
will not let us be deprived of life, libertj^, or prop- 
erty without due process of law. These "trusts" 
are corporations; and in the eyes of the law, cor- 
porations are simply individual persons working 
together instead of separately to secure larger 
capital and to have perpetual life, a quality which 
is absent in partnerships and in separate individ- 
ual enterprises. In no way can their property be 
confiscated in ways which would not apply to 



255 

the property of individuals. We may be sure, 
your Honors', that all laws against "combinations 
in restraint of trade," as Avell as all those which 
put it in the power of the State to destroy corpor- 
ations have sprung from lawlessness and an itching 
for plunder on the part of those who made such laws. 
There is not now and never has been any reason for 
such laws, except the itching palms of people who 
happened to be in a position to make laws for their 
own pecuniary profit. But none of these laws has 
ever dared to give the public any greater right to 
regulate the profits of individuals doing business as 
a private corporation than it has to regulate the 
profits of individuals doing business separately. 
Even the itching palm has stopped there. Now^, 
your Honors', counsel for the wily plaintiff, the 
Importing Trust, has entertained us with a list 
of what he is pleased to call the American "trusts'' 
and has declaimed against them as "conspiracies 
for extortions" and "in restraint of trade." As 
it was the priestcraft of old that, to destroy a 
great prophet, inflamed the rabble to cry "cru- 
cify him!", so to-day it is this wily plaintiff, the 
Importing Trust, that, to destroy its rival in this 
market, organized American Production, fires the 
American rabble to cry out, "Down with the 
trusts! Down with the oppressors of the helpless 
^consumer'!" This wily plaintiff, your Honors', 
is the only oppressor in sight which the American 
people have to dread. Its influence is all-perva- 
sive. Its bribe-givers and bribe-takers, its lobbies 
and wire-pulling cabals, infest this counti-y like 
a pestilence. It reaches up to the highest planes 
of our government and places its profane hands 
on the most sacred offices in the gift of the people. 
It fills the land with frenzy against its own Savior, 



256 

well-paid employment in our Holy Temple of Pro- 
duction. It s'wells the rabble with its paid 
claquers, who scream loudly and yet more loudly, 
"Crucify him I" and in order to enfuriate the peo- 
ple to their own undoing, it invents this goblin's 
story of the "trusts," and repeats it so solemnly 
and so frequently, and with such increasing em- 
phasis, that every covetous citizen feels his palm 
begin to itch; every nere-do-well, idler, and loafer, 
dissipated back-number and has-been in the coun- 
try, begins to pity himself the more for his bad 
case and lay all his troubles to this wraith, the 
"trusts," which has no more real existence than 
the malicious animal magnetism of Mrs. Eddy. 
The "trusts" are the bear story of the vicious 
old nurse of this young Kepublic, the wily plain- 
tiff, the Importing Trust. But a lot of our weak- 
lings believe in the bear, nevertheless. Here is 
one of them writing to an Importing Trust organ 
in one of our large importing cities : 



"But the chief cause that impels a man to take his 
life is [to borrow from Robert Burns] "Man's inhuman- 
ity to man." Oppression of the poor by the rich, the en- 
slaving of the masses by the select few, the control of 
the country's resources by the small minority, and the 
faulty distribution of wealth. It is lamentable in a 
country like ours, with its widely boasted civilization, its 
multiplicity of laws and institutions for the protection of 
the weak and the succor of the oppressed, that 95 per cent, 
of its resources, its soil, should be owned by 5 per cent, of 
the inhabitants. These few capitalists wielding their 
enormous power in an arbitrary and over-bearing manner, 
are responsible for all our misery and wretchedness. 
Verily the wonder oi it all is that so few commit suicide. 
Life under such conditions is hardly worth living; it is 
bound to be wrecked on the shoals of commercial selfish- 
ness. What makes this human tragedy all the more dis- 
mal is the enormous number of children kept at work in 
the mills, mines, and factories." 

Your Honors, there is scarcely a statement in 
this deliverance against the wicked rich but what 



257 

is as far from the truth as is the zenith of the 
celestial sphere from its nadir; but it is a fair 
specimen of our Importing-Trust inHamed popular 
mind with regard to our client, American Produc- 
tion. 

There are no rich, as a class, no poor, as a class, 
and no masses, as a class, in this country. The 
resources of this country are not its soil, any more 
than its people, without whom the soil would be 
worthless. The number of children at work in 
factories, mills, and mines in this country is small 
compared with the number at work abroad, popu- 
lation for population; and the industries in which 
our children are at work are those wnose goods 
sell at the lowest prices', largely because of for- 
eign competition. But the Importing Trust and 
its retainers in their campaign for tariff "revi- 
sion," make our workers compete with countries 
like Japan, whose mills are almost entirely run 
by women and children working for from 7c to 
12c. a day of eleven hours, and, by the help of 
American machinery, doing the same work which 
male adults do in this country. Such writers as 
this think we have a "faulty distribution of 
wealth," because money is not distributed gratis 
to such as he. You have to work for money unless 
you inherit or steal it. But that does not seem 
to suit those of us who would rather s^re^m "Down 
with the trusts!" than build a higher tariff-dike 
and then earn money and save it; which is the 
only respectable way to correct our "faulty dis- 
tribution of wealth." After all, your Honors, 
which should we naturally fear the most? The 
crowd who have no property to be injured by 
anarchism and who use such wild language in de- 
scribing bugaboos which do not exist? Or the 



258 

'^tnifets" who give hostages to fortune and bonds 
for their good behavior in the billions of dollars 
worth of plants in which they employ hundreds 
of thousands of us? If ^^the trusts'^ steal, or mur- 
der, or commit arson or high treason, we can pinch 
their property very quickly and make them pay 
for their crimes'. They are so heavily loaded with 
immovable property that they can't get away; and 
there seems to be no reason for this hue and cry 
against them; this frenzy of excitement; this 
mounting upon, the outer wall to the blare of 
tocsin and trumpet; this hullabaloo and alarm as 
for the repelling of a sudden and slippery inva- 
der. These^trusts" are tied down by their belong- 
ings. They must stay put. And if perchance they 
have broken the laws so that it hurts, if some 
one who is hurt will make the hurt known, quiet 
and orderly process may be begun to punish the 
'^wrongdoers-' and "malefactors of great wealth," 
without inflaming the rabble and appealing to in- 
cendiaiy hate. This might not make as jnany 
votes but it would make a more orderly citizen- 
ship and not disturb our civilization. 

But how about us who are trying to excite to 
insurrection the irresponsible rabble? If we suc- 
ceed and, doing the Avork of the Importing Trust 
in destroying its competitor, American Produc- 
tion, destroy "the trusts" and all their property, 
what sort of hostages to fortune have we given? 
Where is our bond for damages done? Does it 
not seem to you, your Honors, as though the irre- 
sponsible hoodlum running with the gang and 
breathing threatenings of slaughter against "male- 
factors of great wealth," would be more likely to 
"extort" and "exact" things than these "male- 
factors of great wealth" whose tenure to property, 



259 

of which they have a plenty, depends upon their 
being quiet, law-abiding citizens? At any rate, 
it seems so to us, your Honors. 

And it also seems to us, your Honors, that a 
person, saying bad words about the "trusts," 
'^predatory wealth," and '^malefactors of gTeat 
Avealth,'' and deciding that it is better that ninety- 
nine innocent colored men should be punished 
rather than that one guilty one should escape, 
has his justice and equity brain-cells so arranged 
that his word that the "trusts" are such bad peo- 
ple should not be taken without a grain of salt; 
especially Avhen he has the ear-marks of a chattel 
of the wickedest trust in the world, the combina- 
tion made by the consolidation of these wily plain- 
tiffs. 

And it occurs to us, your Honors, that we do 
not recollect that the big Homestead riot and the 
riot in Chicago, of some years back, and the riots 
in other cities, where property was destroyed, 
were led by "certain malefactors of great wealth" 
or that the parties piUoried by the wily plain- 
tiff, the Importing Trust, as being the leading- 
spirits of our American ^^^rusts" applied torches 
or threw bombs or anything of that sort during 
these various entertainments. Eather, as far as 
our recollection goes, the people who did all these 
things were a part of the holy company of saints 
who are now cr-ying, "Down with the Trusts!" 
But, in a case like this, good behavior seems to 
raise no presumption in favor of an accused per- 
son nor bad behavior any presumption against the 
accuser. 

Your Honors, the only possible way in which 
the nefarious "trusts" can be curbed is by mak- 
ing a law a minute to fit their ever-varying crimes. 



2(>0 

Their chief crime, just now, seems to be that they 
manage their affairs so wisely that these Import- 
ing-Trust banditti think the profits of the ^'trusts" 
too large; that is, too large for those whose mid- 
night oil has made them, but only about right for 
these pious grafters of the Importing Trust to 
take away. To our notion no cry would ever 
have been raised against the "trusts" if the Import- 
ing Trust had not wished to destroy American 
Production and seize our domestic market; and of 
those joining in the cry who think they have a 
real grievance against the "trusts'," not one has 
any idea that the "trusts" are entitled to be paid 
a cent for their services in effecting such organi- 
zations that the public now get the products of 
the "trusts" for half the price formerly paid there- 
for; but on the contrary they all seem to think 
that the whole earnings' of all the inventive and 
organizing brains that have joined in such sur- 
prising economies belong to the gentlemen who 
have been set on fire by the spoutings of the Im- 
porting Trust against American Production. 

In looking over this list of the "crimes" of the 
"trusts" which counsel for the wily plaintiff, the 
Importing Trust, has laid before your Honors, we 
are reminded of one crime which counsel for the 
wily plaintiff has made no mention of. We refer 
to the fact of the employment of several hundreds 
of thousands of workers and the payment to these 
same workers of several hundreds of millions of 
wages annually. We also recognize these"trusts" 
as purchasers' of "raw materials" from other 
American industries to the amount of several hun- 
dreds of millions more a year; and a rapid calcula- 
tion shows us that if these "trusts" suddenly 
ceased thus to purchase "raw materials" of other 



2H1 

American industries, these latter industries would 
employ many thousands of hands less in turning 
out those same "raw materials." We also recog- 
nize thes'e "trusts" as drawing upon our railroads 
for freightings to such an extent that if this draft 
should cease, the railroads would be compelled to 
discharge as superfluous many thousands of their 
men. 

Your Honors', we think we can give these peo- 
ple who sing "Down with the trusts!" cards and 
spades and then beat them. They call "crime" 
the quiet pursuit of every industry which does 
not voluntarily divide its profits with them. We 
will not use "crime" in this loose way. To do so 
makes loose morals and leads to myopic ethical 
vision. But what sort of an act is it, that, without 
a shadow of a cause that would hold in a court of 
law, methodically attacks, decries, and embarrasses 
a group of industries such as is represented by 
these "trusts," upon whose employment hang the 
lives of hundreds of thousands of our citizens and 
the prosperity of dozens of other industries' em- 
ploying thousands more? For these industries 
have committed no crime and have broken no law 
upon which their detractors can place a finger. 
The only charge made against them amounts 
merely to a declaration that the property of these 
"trusts" belongs rather to those who denounce the 
"trusts" than to these latter who have earned it 
by superior organization. At least, your Honors, 
this is' a mooted question. If the chattels of the 
Importing Trust who make this charge really be- 
lieve they have a grievance, let them lay it before 
some court having jurisdiction of the matter, and 
then abide the decision like decently honest men. 
But, your Honors, the onslaughts upon vested 



262 

constitutional rights bj these chattels of the Im- 
porting Trusts, if the interest of the latter in the 
case were not so plainly seen, would cause dis- 
interested people to think that these foamers at 
the mouth and frenzied pounders of the ^ ^trusts" 
desired the whole case to be settled by intimida- 
tion in advance of court proceedings, without a 
decision upon the merits of the case, in the man- 
ner in which all other blackmailing jobs are set- 
tled; and this all for the reason that the black- 
mailers knew that their case had no merit and 
would be thrown out of court at the close of the 
reading of the complaint. 

Your Honors, sober-minded people should call 
a halt upon this lawless denunciation of large cor- 
porataions under the name of the ^^trusts;" this 
use of implied threats of mob violence, for the pur- 
pose of political blackmail. Especially does this 
concern the business men of this country, your 
Honors, whose profits come over their counters in 
the money they get for the goods they furnish to 
the public. The business-volume of any country 
is its wage-volume; and the wage-volume coming 
into their hands from the pay-rolls of these ^^trusts'" 
is large enough alone to keep the whole business 
of the country on even keel. Such corporations 
should be encouraged rather than persecuted in 
behalf of the Importing Trust and the substitu- 
tion of imported goods in our markets for the out- 
put of the "trusts." Far more than could be done 
by small organizations, these great organizations 
insure steadiness' in the production and distribu- 
tion of their goods to the public, and a like steadi- 
ness of employment to their Avorkers; and, there- 
fore, an equally steady and reliable demand upon 
our merchants for the necessaries and luxuries of 



263 

life, practically to the full value of the aggregate 
pay-roll of the "trusts." Surely, your Honors, here 
is a great force for steadiness and rhythm in 
American business such as American business men 
should not ignore. 



XXII 

IN THP] INTERESTS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS/ THE CHRIS- 
TIAN CHURCH SHOULD AID IN THE EXORCISING 
OF THE DEVIL^ THE IMPORTING TRUST, THE OPERA- 
TIONS OF WHICH BREED POVERTY, VICE^ AND 
CRIME. 

Your Honors, we cannot turn our attention 
from the influence of the wily plaintiff, the Import- 
ing Trust, towards the degradation of all our peo- 
ple, without recurring again to what we think, 
irrespective of denomination, is the duty of the 
Christian church in the premises. 

Faith which only nails' credence to a supersti- 
tion is worse than dead. But if it is a step to- 
wards nailing a brain-cell to a good habit, it is 
that which will one day be abundantly justified 
in her children. You can preach, pray, and sing 
through all eternity and if you stop there you 
will never save a soul, for you will never reform 
a sinner, no matter how much you convert him 
to faith alone; for conversion and reformation 
are two different horses and unless your chin mu- 
sic crystallizes into good habits in the sinner, 
you might as well save your wind. When a sin- 
ner comes to the altar all melted to tears of con- 
trition, you may think you've got him; but with- 
out a proper readjustment of his brain-cells in 



264 

the manner we have just described, you have only 
converted his sinning from the frankness of the 
brute to the hypocrisy of the human; and even 
that poor conversion wears thread-bare very soon. 
The trouble seems to be that our evangelists fire 
away at sin and sinners, without any idea of what 
sin and sinners are. They may not know it, but 
sin, after all, is merely the unlawful satisfaction 
of a lawful desire; and you have only to substi- 
tute a lawful satisfaction for the same desire, and 
you have resolved a crime into a very proper act, 
a vice into virtue, an ugliness into a beauty. For 
no natural human desire is bad in itself; because 
all human desires' are the urgings of nature to- 
wards pleasure rather than pain, towards life 
rather than death; and every being is naturally 
entitled to live not only without pain, but also with 
all the pleasure his sesnory nerves are capable of 
reporting to his sensorium. So much for "sin." 
Now, as to the sinner, he is not such a fool as to 
be "in rebellion against God." For would he re- 
bel against thunder and lightning; against earth- 
quakes, hurricanes, prairie fires, and such things? 
Wouldn't you think him daft if he did? Well, 
God is something like an earthquake to rational 
people. You can't "rebel;" you can't get into any 
revolt about the situation. If you do, it is a sign 
you are daft. It is not because the sinner is "in 
rebellion against God," or "his better self," or 
such nonsense, that makes* him act so. It is be- 
cause he is a piano played upon by rough hands 
that can't get music out of him. His desires, like 
blind kittens, for their mother's breast, are reach- 
ins^ out for satisfaction, and they are laying hold 
of the first thing in reach that appears likely to 
fill Hie bill. Now if what they lay hold of is 



265 

somebody's watch, people call his pinching it 
theft and him a pickpocket. But if the first thing 
within reach is a good job, within his' mental and 
physical powers to do, and he does it and for do- 
ing it gets wages equal to the value of the watch, 
had he stolen it, they say he honorably earned his 
bread in the sweat of his brow; and they call 
him a good citizen. Now what the poor fellow 
wanted in the first place was neither to steal nor 
to get a watch; what he wanted was something 
to eat. Therefore, what we stand for and what 
we call upon our good brethern in this ministry 
to assist us in doing is the casting out of the Im- 
porting Trust and making honest jobs so plenty 
in this land that when a poor fellow is hungry 
he can pinch good wages instead of watches to 
exchange for bread and meat. We think the sal- 
vation of every man\s soul depends upon his 
stomach. The stomach is the great gateway 
throu2:h which all insruction in piety reaches the 
goal of the understanding. Believing a dogma 
touches no hearts and saves no souls. A man may 
not believe that Jonah swallowed the whale; but 
if he does' right he is a good enough Christian for 
most of us to associate with. But if he believes 
the tous^hest yarn that ever a sky-pilot told, and 
does wrons:, most of us slather up our skirts when 
he passes and put our silver in the safe when he 
sleeps at onr house. So belief does not go very 
far in makius: a man comfortable, reforming his 
Avavs, or fillingr iif^ ^^^ stomach. And unless you 
can do somethins: practical for a man, he is' not 
goinsf to believe in vou very long. It is because 
there is too murh faith and too few works which 
make orood solid habits in risfhteousness that, as 
we think, the Christian churches', if they want 



266 

full pews will, before long, have to adjourn to 
the ball-grounds and picnic groves. We should 
think a church choir would be less apt to waste 
its accomplishments on Old Hundred between 
innings at the Polo Grounds and the minister's 
preaching and praying would be better appreciated 
on the Coney Island beaches than in his own 
church with its empty pews and gloom and damp. 
The proof that we are right about this joining of 
physical good to spiritual healing as the way of 
success to the Christian Church is the success that 
various religious camps have already had march- 
ing that way. Look at the Salvation Army! The 
fellow who helps in a Salvation Army camp gets 
a good breakfast at any rate; and many a poor 
fellow out of a job and not knowing where to turn 
for help, has been soundly converted to its mili- 
tary life and meandering ways and had real piety 
impressed ux)on him by an environment of square 
meals and fair to middling mattresses. And the 
Salvation Array flourishes as the green bay tree. 
Then they tell us that some of our latter-day mis- 
sionaries who have added the medicine chest to 
the Bible in their outfit have made more progress 
with the natives, have cheered more sad hearts 
and saved more souls in a shorter time than half 
a regiment of missionaires who only had and 
preached their glowing faitli alone. Tlveu look at 
Mother Eddy's success! Her church has sprung 
up like a mushroom but seems to have the life of 
a turtle. And what is the secret of it? Nothing 
in the world except the fact that to faith in the 
faith that there is no such thing as sickness, she 
adds the solid promise to heal all your diseases 
and she makes you think she has done it. x\nd then, 
too, after you have shown your faith by coughing 



267 

up 1300 she adds the further works of a diploma 
which sends you forth with her blessing and with 
nothing but thoughts in your medicine chest, to 
"hear' at, say a dollar a treatment, and by the 
present or absent route, as the patient prefers, 
and as your own convenience may require, it being 
sometimes necessary to be present in the flesh in 
one sick room and in spirit in another, at one and 
the same time but not for one and the same fee. 
This contrivance for making a practical use of 
faith rather beats anything we had in mind to start 
with, your Honors', but it illustrates how we hope 
to see preaching yoked in some way to practice, 
such as would follow the shipping of the Import- 
ing Trust to the Cannibal Islands and keeping our 
own jobs for doing by our own people. 

To sum up our reflections upon sin, your Honors, 
since every natural desire has a natural right to 
be satisfied, it is only in the means or measure 
of that satisfaction that sin can occur. But the 
moral rule is that no one should satisfy his desires 
by injury to the person or property of another; 
and it is this injury which constitutes all there 
rationally is of sin. It follows, therefore, that the 
way to convert a sinner is to make it easier for 
him to satisfy his lawful desires' in a lawful than 
in an unlawful way. His brain-cell batteries may 
be all right as they stand; but their wires may 
be badly crossed in passing through the clearing 
house of reason on their way to public action; 
so that their public action may be what is known 
as "sin," or, as we have just said, some injury 
to the person or property of another. And here 
^vo see the bearing of our recommendation that 
the ImDortino: Trust should be sent packing. For 
in order that the satisfaction of a lawful desire 



268 

itself be lawful and injure neither the person nor 
the property of another, the sinner must have 
enough property of his own to satisfy his desires; 
and seeing that the great majority of us are not 
born rich but have to earn what we have in the 
Avay of property, in order to change people from 
sinners to saints, opportunities for getting prop- 
erty by labor should be strewn thickly through 
every community. It therefore falls out that em- 
ployment in working for others is the foundation 
of morality and that to increase such employment 
is to increase morality and vice versa. And it 
is on this account that we want a high-tariff dike 
with its flowing instead of a "revised" tariff-dike 
with its ebbing tide of morality; and that we be 
lieve that the building of a high-tariff dike, and 
tlie confinement of home demand to home supply 
and of home supply to home demand, is to build 
an untakable fortress for the American army of 
righteousness. 

Yes, your Honors, we hear the wily counsel for 
the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, saying 
"But you never can get the Christian ministry to 
believe that morality is religion or that it will 
save a soul without belief in the Apostles' Creed." 
This is aside from the question, your Honors, but 
we pause long enough to say that we do not believe 
God cares what a man thinks as long as he is a 
good fellow, good to his wife and children, good 
to his neiirhbors, faithful to his country, and to 
hiTTisjelf. We know many a believer in lots of hard 
reli<zious stunts; many a believer who believes the 
Bible is inspired from cover to cover, with the 
cover and the ii^ilt title on the back thrown in, but 
so sour nnd uG^lv, so forlorn of face and so crabbed 
in disposition that ^^ could not live with him and 



269 

we do not believe that God could or would of His 
own free will. Everybody loves a hymning sin- 
ner better than a howling saint; and a wise sinner 
instead of a foolish saint is immensely to be pre- 
ferred as a friend and adviser. If belief is the 
article that we have seen in the faces of some peo- 
ple who were said to be very pious, we would 
much prefer it to vinegar for cucumber pickles 
and would recommend it to housekeepers for the 
preserving season. And if a different article of 
faith is what makes some faces we know so bright 
and happy, so like a glimpse of the angels, even 
though they tell us the belief back of those faces 
is rather risky, we must confess to a timid long- 
ing for that brand of belief. And this we say with 
all due reverence for the faith of the unhappy 
Christian and with the hope that when he wakes 
up on the other side he will find God a good deal 
better sort than some of His alleged people here 
describe Him. 

Not only in the matter of morality, your Honors, 
but also in the matter of education, will the pres- 
ence of plenty of opportunities honestly to earn 
our bread send us singing on our way. The rea- 
son why we are compelled to support schools and 
universities now is because the Importing Trust al- 
ways did and still does dissipate among the alien 
races of the earth such a large collection of our 
opportunities' to work for fair wages that there 
are not enough left to go 'round in the way they 
should and otherwise would and finally reach 
down into our deepest slums and gradually wash 
them clean. But build the tariff-dike sky-high; 
keep every opportunity to earn a good day's pay 
right at home; and very soon the people would be 
so generally well to do that they would have their 



270 

own ideas as to the best way to educate them- 
selves and learning would be placed upon a bet- 
ter footing than it now is. For education, like 
religious belief, is of no account unless it fits the 
•educated one to make a better showing in this 
world than he could make without it. With plenty 
of good jobs' in sight education would be but a 
tool in the hand of the worker. Workers know 
that education is of use only as it helps them to 
more comfortable lives; and, given an abundance 
of employment, the^^ would provide their own 
schools. In a few words, to point the moral to our 
tale: If there is work to do behind a tall dike, 
education will follow naturally, by the initiative 
of the people. With no work to do behind a "re- 
vised" dike, education technical or otherwise, 
would be as superfluous as a tail to a toad ; and that 
tail w^ould soon be sloughed off. 

As we have hinted in regard to this very same 
matter, the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, 
has cute ways of taking attention from the tariff- 
dike, when the prosperity of the country is slowly 
leaking to emptiness through a thousand different 
breaks which, by one or another of its devious 
ways in politics and diplomacy, the Importing 
Trust has made therein; and one of these cute 
ways, as we believe we have also already hinted, 
is- to teach our people to hitch their carts before 
their horses. One of these carts is "technical 
s'chools" or "technical" or "commercial education," 
and "a study of the needs of foreign markets and 
tlie best methods of securing their trade." And 
at this very moment, while practical eyes should 
see nothinu but our d(miestic market slippins: from 
US' through the operations of the Importing Trust, 
the wily plaintiff thrnms on a]l its harps the song 



271 

'^Technical Education the Key to the Markets of 
the World !• ' Your Honors, this is like the scheme 
of the robber gang who hired a great brass band 
to play, just after nightfall, patriotic airs in the 
public square of a back-country town, and rob- 
bed the houses of the innocent citizens while the 
latter were away at the entertainment. It is like 
the present manoeuvre of the German Kaiser, 
tickling American tourists under the chin, while 
his merchants are robbing American industry un- 
der the Koosevelt-Koot agreement. You can afford 
to feel wondrous good-natured and stroke your* 
victim very gently while you are reaching for his 
watch — that is if you are a pickpocket. We should 
beware of free treats and shows in the public 
squares. Thieves are not far away from the spot 
where some kindhearted man is giving away some- 
thing for nothing. 

Isn't the wily plaintiff cute, your Honors? By 
its matter-of-course manner of saying that our 
only hope of glory lies in foreign trade, hypnotiz- 
ing the people to look at foreign trade as the great 
goal of all effort; and, without arousing the hyp- 
notic sleepers, passing to the suggestion that the 
only way for our people to be industrially great 
is by ^^technical education ;" ignoring the fact that 
we may always be great industrially if we do no 
more than our own work through the sheltering 
power of the tarift'-dike, to which end no "tech- 
nical education" is required farther than we are 
getting by actual experience! Yes, your Honors, 
the wily plaintiff, with studied purpose, ignores 
the fact that the higher we build the dike the 
more nearly our own domestic trade approaches in 
volume the entire trade of the world outside; and 
that "technical education" follows the competi- 



^2 

tion between bodies of capital here at home as 
naturally as the invention of new processes and 
new machines follows the offering of additional 
profit therefrom in a secure and steady market. 
Yes, your Honors, to make "technical education" 
the condition precedent of getting a market is to 
put the cart before the horse. With no market in 
sight and no apparent field for the profitable use 
of a new machine, do men with capital go ahead 
and lay out large money in experiments and con- 
trivings? No, your Honors, you must prove to 
them first that their dollar laid out in machinery 
will come back to them leading a part of another 
dollar by the halter, before they will put their 
hands in their pockets for machinery. And it is 
so with the wage-producers also. Unless they see 
a return for their pains awaiting them they will 
waste no time in technical education. And a 
level-headed business man in a cost-100 country sees 
no certain return from trading with a cost-20 
world. The reason why technical education has 
advanced in Germny is because Germany is a cost- 
30 country and, by technical drill, Germans have 
merely to lay aside their handicap of clumsiness 
in order to bring to bear against our cost-100 coun- 
try and cost-50 Great Britian the full force of 
their lower pay-roll. The right scent for both 
Great Britian and us to follow against German 
cheapness, which threatens both countries like a 
pestilence, is prohibitive tariff -dikes. But the wily 
plaintiff, fearing we will "catch on,'' is leading 
us off with feverish impressment upon the false 
scent of "technical education" and "study of com- 
mercial requirements abroad!" 



273 



XXIII 

THE PRETENSE THAT THE 

WISE HARM THE PEOPLE^ EVEN THOUGH NO GOODS 
OF ANY KIND WERE EVER IMPORTED^ IS A GREAT 
FRAUD. 

Your Honors, the wily plaintiff, the Importing 
Trust, is playing Foxy Grandma with us. It says 
if we don't let in foreign goods to compete with 
the ^^trusts,'' these latter will swallow us like alli- 
gators. But, your Honors, the ''trusts'' are never- 
theless composed of men and they must be a ma- 
jority of us to do it; and would a majority of us 
vote that we should swallow us? No other na- 
tion ever swallowed itself in that way ; and really, 
your Honors, we do not think our nation differs 
from other nations in this respect. And then when 
it gives us advice the wily plaintiff' may be mis- 
taken again because it has many, many times, rec- 
ommended a dose of foreign production for our 
disordered national liver and after taking its pre- 
scription the nation has nearly died from an empty- 
stomach; and we all voted that a heap worse than 
bad liver. Any way, your Honors, does it seem 
reasonable that, if left to itself, we would swallow 
us? Because, before nations were formed, there 
were tribes, and we never heard of any tribe swal- 
lowing itself in this way. And there have always 
been "trusts" even in savage tribes; and we never 
heard of the "trusts" in any tribe swallowing all 
the rest of the people, as the Importing Trust says 
our "trusts" will do if we don't watch out. Why, 
it seems to us, your Honors, that if there had been 
any of this self-swallowing virus in our veins we 



274 

would have all swallowed us ages ago and have 
left by this time nothing but the animals and the 
fishes. Instead of us all swallowing us, however, 
we have kept right on ciphering on the face of the 
earth, as we believe the Good Book says*. And now 
look at us! We are a billion and a half or more 
and still coming ! 

Now it don't seem to us, your Honors, as if we 
had left a very good record for the health of any 
crowd, call them "trusts" or what not, that has 
tried to swallow us. In the first place, we were 
a lot of small nations called "tribes;'' and we got 
tired of having so many small bosses called 
"chiefs," and we just stored a lot of them in the 
garret and then had only a few big ones instead, 
which we called "kings." Then we got tired of hav- 
ing so many kings and we sent a lot of them to 
the scrap heap and gave the job of several of them 
at once to a fellow we called an "emperor." Then 
after a while some few of us, at any rate, got tired 
of the royal shooting match and put both kings 
and emperors in our rummage sale and elected 
Teddy. This don't look like going towards the 
little end of the horn, does it, your Honors? It 
don't look much like our letting any boss do us 
much harm before we showed him the door, does 
it? Now it don't make any difference whether your 
boss is a king with a whole lot of colored goods on 
his back, or a "trust" or anything else, the temper 
of our blood is not made to stand any back talk 
for long from anybody whose rule is against fair 
play and not according to contract. You see, your 
Honors, we have here in this countiy a contract 
between all the people called the "constitution" and 
according to that every fellow has a right to earn 
all the money he can and when he has earned it 



275 

he has to give up some of it in taxes for schools 
and a few other things and the rest is his to keep 
or to buy something with; and if he buys some- 
thing, he can keep what he buys as long as he 
pleases and then sell it if he wants to ; but he need 
not sell until he gets what he asks for it, and it 
is nobody's business what he asks for it; and no 
matter what he asks for it, if it is worth more to 
you than to him at his price and you buy it, he is 
not "extorting'' or "exacting" more than he has 
a perfect right to according to this agreement 
called the "constitution." Now it seems to us, your 
Honors, that, as long as these "trusts" are only 
doing just what the agreement gives them a right 
to do, nobody has a right to squeal. We have no 
right to say their prices are too high any more than 
they have to say our prices are too high. We can- 
not take their things by force and pay them only 
what we want to, any more than they can take 
our things by force, and pay us only what they 
want to. If this way of doing things is wrong, 
then it is our own fault for making such an agree- 
ment as we did in the constitution; and the way 
to make things better is for us all to get together 
and make another agreement or constitution in 
which we agree not to be "trusts" but that each of 
us shall work alone by himself ; and after that new 
agreement is made if a lot of fellows get together 
and make a "trust," then we can light on them 
and take their things at whatever price we have a 
mind to give. If this was all agreed to in this 
way, then the "trusts" would have no kick coming 
if we took their goods away from them and gave 
them anything we wanted to for them; but until 
we do this and people who are now "trusts" have 
had notice that everything has been changed and 



276 

that we are going to run our autos on a different 
road than the one thej have been running on for 
a thousand years, we have no right to say the 
"trusts'' "extort" or "exact" from us when they 
just fix the price they want to on their goods. Be- 
cause we agreed in the contract that they could; 
and if we kick, we are a lot of poor hoodlums and 
deserve to be punished; and the "trusts" would 
only give us what was coming to us if they shut 
us up a while and made us eat the constitution 
for each meal. For that is what we would de- 
serve. We are chewing our own words when we 
go back on the constitution and say the "trusts" 
must sell their goods to us by one rule which we 
make as we go along; but that we can sell our 
goods' to them by the constitution rule, which lets 
us fix our own price. 

Now it seems to us, your Honors ,that, before 
we plead the baby act and bawl "No fair" and say 
we didn't know exactly what we were about when 
we made the constitution contract, and blubber 
away about being strangled by the "trusts," unless 
we break the dike and drown the whole country to 
get rid of a few field-mice — before we make a holy 
show of ourselves and get sent to the insane ward 
for observation, we might better wait until this 
"trust" strangulation strangles some. It has not 
begun yet, with our savings-bank deposits running 
towards four billions of dollars and increasing by 
the minute. But when it begins to strangle us 
some, no matter how little, let us all remember 
that, in this country, we have ballots that are bet- 
ter than brick-bats. Let us remember one thing, 
which the Importing Trust, through its red-hot 
newspaper allies, is trying to make us forget, and 
that is that we the people, by a majority, are the 



277 

bosses of this country; that the President and his 
cabinet are our most humble servants, and that 
Congress is our hallboy, or, at any rate that is what 
we hired him for; and if either of these servants of 
ours gets a swelled head — and they some times do 
— and do not do what we want, we can dismiss 
him and choose another. And if we don't like our 
national contract, the constitution, if there are 
enough of us who think the same way about it, 
we can scratch it out and write a new one; and 
we can make it just to suit ourselves. Now in this 
state of matters, your Honors, the fellow who goes 
up and down the country firing people's ire against 
"predatory wealth," "malefactors of great wealth'' 
or any group of people, who are handling their 
property in accordance with their constitutional 
rights, is simply a public nuisance who ought to 
be suppressed for breach of the peace. By the fact 
that he does not enter complaint against them un- 
der some statute, he proves that these people 
against whom he declaims are obeying the laws. 
The good Lord knows he would "have the law on 
them" if he had half a chance. But he proves that 
he himself is the real malefactor by his seditious 
talk and his trying to make the morally weak tram- 
ple on their own contract, the national constitu- 
tion. The thing that should inspire us, your Hon- 
ors, to quiet and orderly conduct under all circum- 
stances, in spite of the ravings of "gluttons of the 
lime-light," is the great fact that we are the sov- 
ereign people and that in our hands, by lawful and 
decent means, with "malice towards none but char- 
ity for all," is the power to remedy any evil what- 
ever that can be remedied by human hands. The 
laws are ours, based on our constitution. We made 
them all; and we can change them all to meet any 
requirement of mjodernity. The Constitution is 



278 

ours. We made it and break it as we please by 
amendment, all in regular course of law and of jus- 
tice. Why should we fume and fret, your Honors, 
against the "trusts'^ or "predatory wealth," or 
"malefactors of great wealth," or "predatory cor- 
porations," or people with "swollen fortunes," or 
anything at all? If the doings of any one do not 
seem in accordance with the public good, let us 
look up the law and see if he is breaking it. If he 
seems to be breaking it, let us in a quiet and 
orderly manner file our complaint, without fum- 
ings and threatenings or lime-light pirouettings, 
gyrations, or gesticulations. In preserving pub- 
lic order, let us not let our right hand know what 
our left hand doeth. Let us do good by suppress- 
ing evil under the law for the good of our common 
country and not for personal glory. But if we 
find on inquiry that what we thought was an evil 
was nevertheless according to law; if we thought a 
"trust" was asking a price higher than we thought 
we could afford to pay, and it seemed to us against 
the law, but, on looking the matter up, we found 
there was no law to prevent the "trusf any moi'e 
than an individual from keeping its property until 
it got its price, then it would not be the "trust" 
that would be in the wrong, but the law; and all 
our red-fire should be burned at the impersonal 
law; and public opinion should be molded in such 
a way as to bring about an amendment to the con- 
stitution and a new law based on that which would 
compel the "trusts," and us and you, your Hon- 
ors, — for the "trusts" are only collections of people 
like us, — to sell our property in accordance with 
some new rule or law such as we had agreed upon. 
But we have no right, your Honors, to froth at 
the mouth and yell ourselves hoarse and shake our 



279 

fists at anybody for doing exactly what the law al- 
lows him to do. That is to teach the people not 
to consider laws as the safeguards of rights ; but in- 
stead to make of every individual his own law- 
maker; and then by necessary sequence, his own 
law-enforcer; and there you have anarchy. And 
that is just the direction our country would take, 
your Honors, under the unbridled lead of our 
"Glutton of the Lime-Light." 

But, your Honors, not even our "glutton of the 
lime-light" trots except in the harness of the Im- 
porting Trust. The fine Italian hand of this wily 
plaintiff can be seen in every insurrectionary at- 
tack on American Production, whether called 
"trusts," "criminal corporations," "criminal rail- 
roads," "predatory capital," or "certain malefac- 
tors of great wealth." Just now the wily plaintiff 
has more than cause to be content with the "Gov- 
ernment" which makes German Agreements, Cu- 
ban Treaties, and schemes for free trade with the 
world through the Philippine Hole in the Wall. 
But usually when the Importing Trust, through its 
newspapers, alludes to the "Government" as "ex- 
acting" taxes from the many for the benefit of the 
few, it means that the tariff-dike is interfering with 
its profits and should be removed; and it wishes 
to give to ignorant people the impression that the 
"Government" here is some despotic thing against 
which we should revolt, as foreign countries revolt 
against kings and their divine rights ; and that the 
tariff-dike is simply a king's extortionate taxation. 
It seems strange that even the wih^ defendant 
should thus speak of our "Government;" because 
"Government" ^\ith us is a structure made by the 
people, and one which from time to time and with- 
out revolutionary fury, the people remodel to suit 



280 

themselves. But we imagine, your Honors, that 
the wily plaintiff, in thus referring to the "Govern- 
ment" as an alien antagonist, distinct from the 
people, and representing a royal line that preys on 
the people, is depending upon the fact that a large 
number of us have come so recently from govern- 
mental oppression in the old countr^^ that we don't 
quite understand the new situation and do not 
realize as we should that we ourselves are the "Gov- 
ernment," and therefore the habit of responding to 
the word "Government" with a rush of hate to our 
heads is still with us; and the wily plaintiff im- 
agines that the quickest way of making us aid the 
wily plaintiff in any plot for the rape of this coun- 
try's savings account is to give out that it is only 
operating "agin the Government." 

In all its machinations, and especially in order 
to rouse the blind fury of our people to their own 
undoing and to its vast enrichment, in applying the 
word "trust" to American Production, the wily 
plaintiff, the Importing Trust has shown itself of 
great resourcefulness and great cunning; but, your 
Honors, it is not the means to the end which 
stamps this wily plaintiff with its true character; 
it is rather the end itself and the repeated and piti- 
less accomplishment of and profiting by the accom- 
plished end. Your Honors, no army of trained cut- 
throats at any period of the world's development, 
when sacking and burning cities in its path, has 
ever shown more love of havoc than has this wily 
plaintiff, in the starvation, despair, and untimely 
death under which its success against our life-pre- 
serving tariff-dike has so often buried our devoted 
country. Not once alone, your Honors, but many, 
many times has this wily plaintiff scarred our land 
as bv fire and left behind on overv hand worse 



281 

things than smoking ruins of happy homes. Lan- 
guage would fail to describe the lively horrors of 
its every triumph. It is not bloodthirsty, your 
Honors. It does not slay for the horrid lust of 
killing. It slays for the same reason that pirates 
have always taken human life — for plunder. And 
its descents upon our homes are always made with 
the same swoop and swirl with which the cattle- 
stealers in olden times raved down from the moun- 
tains to the smiling plains, only soon to be off and 
out of sight with their spoil until flocks and herds 
had been replenished and the lowland farms were 
left unguarded once more. The wily plaintiff 
knows that, with its breath of destruction, it can- 
not rule us for long; because if it did we should 
be utterly consumed and leave no sign. It knows 
that we, a cost-100 country, cannot live long with- 
out a high tariff-dike against a cost-20 world. The 
most it hopes for is to fool our people to smashing 
the dike, through which it can rush like a Niagara 
flood, soak up our savings and all the wealth that's 
movable and be gone. It knows that after each 
raid upon the dike; after each all-destroying de- 
luge and exterminating inundation of foreign 
goods, the i)eople always have and always will 
awaken to their horrible folly, throttle all opposi- 
tion, and build the dike anew and higher than ever; 
but for the momentary plunder, with the purpose 
of scooping up a small portion of the wasting heap 
of our wealth unseated by the deluge, it fills this 
land periodically with its sonorous crusade against 
the American "trusts" and ends by the destruction 
of billions of American property. It is the looter 
who sets fire to the King's palace in order to run 
away with the crown jewels under cover of the 
smoke. It recks not of the destruction of life, by 



282 

sheer starvation and despair, which its success is 
sure to bring, and which it has itself often seen 
follow its forays upon our tariff -dike. For neither 
the wail of the orphan, the sob of the widow, nor 
the j2Toan of the strong man who sees his wife and 
children, from a want he cannot meet, fading be- 
fore his eyes into the very shadow of the grave, has 
pathos to check the wily plaintiff in its work of 
death : and unheeding the havoc which it unfailing- 
ly scatters over this fair land of ours, in a country 
where there are no classes, it continues from gen- 
eration to generation inflaming the people by its 
apr>eal to class hatred, in which it preaches a gos- 
pel of enw and covetousness, Avhich, for hypocrisy 
and hellishness would even make Lucifer redden 
with shame. 

Your Konors, who shall have aught of reproach 
for us if we declare once m.ore that, judfiring from 
thpir contempt of the lives of men, these wily plain- 
tiffs are the wickedest "trust" in the world! 

XXIV 

THE WILY PLAINTIFF, THE IMPORTING TRUST, IS A 
TEACHER OP CANNABALISM TO AMERICANS WHO 
ATTEND ITS SCHOOL. 

If your Honors please, counsel for the wil}^ plain- 
tiff, the Importing Trust, in his dread assault upon 
our humble client, American Production, pointed, 
with a brow dark with awful reprobation, at some 
dozen or so so-called i^eciprocity treaties sleping the 
sleep of tlie unjust in the Senate pigeon-holes. But 
what are these so-called "reciprocity treaties,'' your 
Honors? Mere bills of sale to the Cannibal Chief, 



283 

International Commercialism, of the American 
conscience and the American compassionate heart, 
and, to the wily plaintiffs, of the precious souls 
and bodies of millions of our wage-producers ! Alas 
for poor human nature! Alas for the land of the 
free and the home of the brave! For we are not 
supposed to be the Cannibal Islands, but a gener- 
ous, a noble, a never-to-be-excelled country, of 
which the State of Massachusetts is the brightest 
star in our national constellation and the City of 
Boston its shiniest trj. Oh, what means the clam- 
or from the Pilgrim-Father State for the execution 
of this bunch of bills of sale of human flesh? Only 
that where stomachs are concerned and pocket- 
books interested, the whole earth is a Cannibal Isl- 
and and the City of Boston its hub! No wonder 
our cautious Senate lets those treaties sleep in its 
pigeon-holes! And alas and alack again for poor 
human nature if it does not soon etherize the 
whole batch of them! For they are merely com- 
pacts with foreign countries, executed at the in- 
stance of our select band of Cannibals, by which 
the American people, through its President and 
Senate, strip one group of citizens of their last 
fibre of flesh and present it to other American citi- 
zens, who. for some reason unknown to decency, 
have a better hold on the affections of our Presi- 
dent and the Senate than have the devoted victims 
of this cannibalism. Look at it, your Honor»^ It 
is proposed, for instance, to rob our woolen manu- 
facturers of the whole home market, in order that 
our steel manufacturers, for instance, may not only 
have the Avhole of the home market still protected by 
the tariff-dike, but a large slice of some foreign 
market also, purchased with the proceeds of the 
aforesaid robbery ! Alas again and again for poor 



284 

human nature, when its itching palm can thus be 
stretched out to receive the coin made from the 
very bones and breath of its brothers in toil ! 

Your Honors, those who are thus willing to coin 
their brother's blood and make money from the 
hunger-pangs which torture his family, do not 
come from any one of our States exclusively; but 
what horrifies us so much is that any of them at 
all should come from the moral and intellectual 
State of Massachusetts; and that, too, your Hon- 
ors, when the Massachusetts industries who join 
this CTuel campaign for reciprocity treaties and 
"free raw materials," are doing well, nay are tran- 
scendentally prosperous because of the tariff-dike, 
whose kindly protection they desire taken away 
from many of their sister industries, in order that 
they themselves may be more than extravagantly 
prosperous. Not only are they rolling in the wealth 
which has come their way within the years since 
the Dingley Dike took the place of the Wilson 
Ditch, but, from the steady pull of our American 
demand, braced to the utmost by the biggest and 
best-paid army of wage-producers ever fed under 
a single flag, an infinite measure of more is even 
now in sight. But yet the cry of the Puritans is 
"More!'' And to get more, they are demanding 
with all their Boston arrogance that, by means of 
these reciprocity treaties, they be allowed to feed 
into the hoppers of their mills the very bodies and 
souls of wage-producers of other industries, to 
come out molded into the shape of additional for- 
eign trnde for the feeders. Oh, Massachusetts! Oh, 
Boston ! How have the Puritans deteriorated, even 
since the days of Salem! 



285 



XXV 



MOTHER ENGLAND IS A DREADFUL PICTURE OF THE 
HAVOC WHICH THESE WILY PLAINTIFFS^ IF UN- 
BRIDLED, WILL FINALLY WORK UPON OUR OWN 
DEVOTED COUNTRY. 

Your Honors^ as far and wide as human nature 
is the presence and the influence of these wily 
plaintiffs. They represent the cunning, the defi 
ness, the alertness, and the pitilessness which char- 
acterize all beasts of prey. The Importing Trust m 
nothing but unalloyed rapine. It has not a single 
redeeming feature. Its sole function is, by the 
finesse of trade, to get wealth which others have 
labored to create. It never creates wealth itself; 
but without a moment's hesitation, witliout a re- 
gret or a pang of conscience, without a syllable of 
compassion, but merely in order to stride across 
the ruin it has wrouorht and lay its untrembling 
hands on a comparatively insignificant spoil, it 
often destroys great masses of values. We have 
merely to point to Mother England to prove the 
worst we have ever said about the Importing Trust, 
which, everywhere, yesterday, to-dav, and forever 
is the same. Here is a bit of its hideous history: 
In the early 40s of the last century there was great 
distress among English workers in various of her 
mills. The true cause of this was the fact 
that the American tariff of 1842 had cut 
off Ensrland's best customer, and England's 
laborers, having theretofore been huddled to^-ether 
upon those trades which supplied the American 
ns woll as the British market, were hit bv Ameri- 



286 

can protection and were often out of employment; 
and of course there was distress — distress di- 
rectly traceable to the English Exporting Trust, 
which for generations liad warped and distorted 
English industry from a development in which it 
would have taken the whole output of each branch 
to supply the demand of the English people, to a 
state in Avhich almost entire industries relied on 
foreign markets to buy their outputs. Of course 
those out of employment in these industries found 
bread high. It would have been high for them at a 
farthing a stone. And they starved. But the Eng- 
lish Exporting Trust hid the true reason by say- 
ing it was dear bread and not dear work that 
starved the workers, and that the English tariff 
was the cause. Then the English Importing TruSv 
and the English Exporting Trust put their heads 
together and caused the destruction of the English 
tar iff -dike, the Corn Laws, which were repealed in 
1846. The American Imj)orting Trust says the Re- 
peal of the Corn Laws was followed by increased 
employment of English wage-producers and greater 
happiness in England. Does it remember that . the 
repeal of the Corn Laws in England in 1846 was 
almost s^^nchronous with the smashing of our 
tariff-dike here by the notorious Walker Tariff, of 
unholy memory, a measure for the destruction of 
Northern mills for the benefit of Southern plan- 
tations ; and that, on that account alone, England's 
mills were started again at high speed and starv- 
ing workers given employment anew? The Import- 
ing Trust also says the famine in Ireland about 
that time was caused by English protective tariffs. 
Your Honors, the Importing Trust is saintly in its 
love of truth. Ireland's famine came then and all 
her famines hnve since come from her colonizing by 



287 

England and, through coinpiiLsory free trade with 
the English Industrial Giant, the destruction of 
her wonderfully diA^ersified system of industries 
w^hich forced Ireland, without wages to buy other 
things, largely to live on potatoes; and when the 
potato crop rotted, poor Ireland starved to death, 
although "only across the channel are people who 
roll in gold." No, your Honors; it is not English 
protection that starved Ireland, but English free 
trade with her unhappy colony "across the chan- 
nel," on the greenest and richest and yet because of 
free trade, the unhappiest island on the globe. It 
is not land or water, or mines or forests alone that 
make people rich, your Honors. It is the sacred 
right to labor for decent wages. 

But w^hat w^as the early effect upon England of 
the abandonment of her tariff-dike, your Honors? 
It was a dreadful slaughter of English men and 
women, which forms a chapter of horrors worse 
than that which is written by the sacking by sav- 
ages of a great city. England's workers Avere ex- 
ploited by two enemies then, both the Importing 
Trust and the Exporting Trust. The Exporting 
Trust had already congested English workers too 
much on a limited number of industries, leaving 
them to depend for their lives on a foreign export 
trade w^hich w^as always affected by Avind and 
weather, war and diplomacy, and Avas often at the 
mercy of the American Congress, Avhich, at one 
session, would build a tariff-dike against English 
goods and dispense starvation to English workers 
thus made idle ; and at the next, perhaps, when the 
English lobby in Washington was strong enough, 
Avith the aid of our Importing Trust, the Avily plain- 
tiff herein, to make Congressmen shut their eyes 
to the death they were dealing among their own 



288 

country men, would tear down the dike again and 
renew hope in English hearts. But now, in addi- 
tion to the havoc made by England's Exporting 
Trui^t, her Importing Trust, by exploring and 
exploiting every land where goods could be 
made more cheaply than in England, del- 
uged her with foreign goods and drowned 
out of their employment forever thousands 
upon thousands of England's cleverest workers. 
Whole industries Avere wiped oft: the English map. 
Thousands of farmers were beggared by the impor- 
tation of American wheat, and her farming lands 
were abandoned to pasture by the hundreds of 
thousands of acres; while in the vilest of quarters 
in her large cities, the unemployed festered in 
heaps. And everywhere in Great Britain laboring 
humanity became so cheap that none was so poor 
as to do it reverence. 

This exploitation of the English pay-roll, on the 
one hand by the Exporting Trust and on the other 
by the Importing Trust, rapidly gathered the en- 
tire wealth of the British Islands into the hands 
of the members of the Importing Trust, the great 
merchants, and the Exporting Trust, the manu- 
facturers and the nobility who patronized manu- 
facturing industries. England's industrial history 
is the history of the machinations of the British 
counterparts of these wily plaintiffs to enslave 
British wage-producers and grow rich from their 
bartered bodies and souls. In the face of such a 
history, what a mockery is the national boast of 
England, to wit, ^^No slave can live under tlie Brit- 
ish flag!" Why, your Honors, England has done 
nothing else but enslave her wage-producers for 
generations. For centuries she led English indus- 
tries along the lines in which, in the form of spe- 



289 

cial products, her manufacturers could pawn her 
stores of coal and iron with the Loan Uncles of 
the Importing Trusts of all the foreign-trading 
countries in the world, thus, while impoverishing 
the many, enriching the few who could purchase a 
title to her mines, by allowing them at bargain 
prices, and in a comparatively short time, to scat- 
ter all over the world the natural stores which if 
used alone for her own people, should have lasted 
her ten thousand years; and with an insanity which 
surely did not come from the good gods, placing 
herself in a position where she would be at the 
mercy of the outside earth for these things. Thus 
England's Exporting Trust has sold out the Eng- 
lish nation in the world's public auction-room and 
left English wage-producers at the mercy of the 
ebbing and flowing tide of foreign trade and for- 
eign dike-building which has barred out English 
goods, except on terms which English wage-pro- 
ducers have had t6 pay in lower wages. 

So England has become industrially lop-sided. 
Great in mineral wealth, but only entitled to a me- 
diocre position as a producer of her own food, her 
Exporting Trust cashed in her mineral wealth and 
piled up power in that form fifty-fold greater than 
her natural strength in population and land entit- 
led her to have, and thus pawned at a low competi- 
tive figure England's powder to live long and sober- 
ly. A natural dwarf, England's Exporting Trust — 
at that time England herself — desired to be a giant, 
and, for a time, became a giant in manufacturing 
while she shrank to a pigmy in farming. Then the 
Importing Trust came to its own; and with free 
trade proceeded to convert both English farmers 
and English factory hands into coin for its till. 
And this thing has gone on until England is a land 



21)0 

of starving workers and of people whose only ex- 
cuse for not leaving her inhospitable shores is the 
lack of the price of the passage across. With her 
impoverished population and her prostrate agricul- 
ture she is at the mercy of foreign markets wherein 
to unload her manufactures in exchange for bread. 
And after all these years of riotous living by the 
counterparts of these wily plaintiffs, what is she 
facing? The alternative of going back and repair- 
ing her tariff -dike against foreign goods coming in, 
and building a tariff dam against her own pro- 
ducts going out; or industrial and political anni- 
hilation. Her fate is written large on the wall. 
She never was entitled to be larger than her power 
of growing food for her own people ; and back again 
to the size to which she was originally fitted to 
grow, she must shrink. Aye, your Honors, and to 
as much smaller dimensions as her natural resour- 
ces have been squandered in foreign trade. The 
usurer with which she has pawned her future for 
her present will soon demand back his principal 
together with his interest. With her mineral 
wealth fatally reduced to secure those advances 
with which she hag paid for her inflated grandeur, 
she will be compelled to raise a huge tariff dike 
against grain, turn her pastures to plow lands, 
clear her forests, confiscate her gentlemen's parks, 
and raise her own food ; and, failing in her foreign 
markets, now being shut to her by dike-builders, 
rely only on the market made by her own people at 
home. Thus she will shrink to her own natural 
size by the exorcising of the two devils, who are 
counterparts of the wily plaintiffs in this suit; 
but she will stand on a more healthy and secure 
footing. 

Why, your Honors, is so little known or said 



291 

of the havoc wrought in our good Mother England's 
happiness by the first cousins of these wily plain- 
tiffs? Merely because these very wily plaintiffs 
hide the English ruin by every means in their 
power, to the end that our good people may not look 
upon these wily plaintiffs also with aversion. Yes, 
your Honors, the facts of England^s misery are 
carefully suppressed. Only the good figures leak 
out to this country. The English Exporting and 
Importing Trusts work together with these wily 
plaintiffs to keep our people ignorant of the re- 
sults of their sale of English wage-producers into 
bondage. Whole English industries have been 
wiped out and hundreds of thousands of British 
wage-producers have been crowded from their 
trades and have died in the deepest misery because 
of free trade and its pestilential competition, but 
these facts are never mentioned in the doctored fig- 
ures pretending to show the condition of English 
industry. No your Honors, these English statis- 
tics do not show the frightful congestion of British 
labor upon a narrowed field of employment. They 
do not tell of the overrunning of their country with 
foreign goods; the immigration of English indus- 
tries to the mainland of Europe ; or the invasion of 
English wage-producing fields by foreigners and by 
women and children, paid even less than the star- 
vation wages of the English adult male. Probably 
the chapter of horrors in the English free trade his- 
tory will — we might say ^^can" never be Avritten. 
Language is too weak to describe the degradation 
of body and soul, the mental and physical anguish, 
and the starvation-slaughter scattered among Eng- 
lish wage-producers by the counterparts of these 
wily plaintiffs, even if every possible detail of these 
horrors were not strenuously suppressed by this in- 



■ 292 

ternational guild of Exporting and Importing 
Trusts. But we of this land have nothing to say. 
Again and again these wily plaintiffs have wrought 
a ruin among our own wage-producers for the mo- 
ment as terrible as that wrought in an equal time 
by their cousins in England. All unrest among our 
wage-producers here; and all disquiet among those 
of other countries are the direct fruit of the tilling 
and sowing of these wily plaintiffs and their foreign 
kinsmen. Wherever move our own wily plaintiffs or 
their counterparts abroad, the goal of their efforts 
is the undetected conversion of broad national pros- 
perity into narrow individual fatness for the mem- 
bers of these destructive "trusts." Yea, as para- 
sites to a bleeding host these wily plaintiffs attach 
themselves to the nations at a loss of national blood, 
which, were it all known, would "stagger human- 
ity." 

Paralyze the right arm of these wily plaintiffs, 
your Honors, and of all their foreign confreres, and 
an ideal socialism would pervade the earth; a so- 
cialism which would not impair individual initia- 
tive, but would reach all the highest aims of our 
current socialism. Pure socialism is the pure doc- 
trine of human brotherhood; but the form usually 
advocated does not take note of the fact that indi- 
viduals are often as far apart as the poles in nat- 
ural gifts; and it therefore would deprive the com- 
munity of the benefit of its aggregate strength by 
throwing away the power of each individual in ex- 
cess of a certain average. But, your Honors, if by 
a prohibitory dike you shut out foreign goods and 
by a prohibitive dam you kept in domestic goods, 
the aggregate production of the community would 
be divided among its members in proportion to pro- 
ductive merit as expressed by individual ability. 



293 

For the whole of the coinm unity's demand being 
directed to its whole supply, and w^ages rising or 
falling according to the ratio betw^een demand for 
and supply of wage-production, both wages and 
prices w^ould come to an equilibrium in a given in- 
dustry at the point at which supply exactly equaled 
demand for the given product; and profits of prop- 
erty-producers then would have been reduced to the 
point where a lower profit would cause the migra- 
tion of capital ; which would also be the point where 
profit would be merely the wages of the property 
producer, fixed also by the ratio between the de- 
mand and the supply of the given form of prop- 
erty-production. Wages would now be mere coun- 
ters showing the extent to which each wage-pro- 
ducer was entitled to draw upon the common sup- 
ply of the community; and the wages of a given 
wage-producer would be large or small, according 
to his energy as a producer. But foreign trade, in 
which the wily plaintiffs live, destroys this equi- 
librium and frequently returns to a wage-pro- 
ducer wages not proportioned to his ability, his em- 
ployment being as a rule a mere matter of chance, 
determined by the fact whether the wily plaintiff, 
the Importing Trust, has sold abroad the country's 
demand which otherwise would have come to our 
wage-producer. Furthermore, the wage-producer's 
wages should be his title to a portion of his product 
in merchandise commensurate, not arbitrarily with 
the money he earns, but with the amount of energy 
he applies to his work, which is supposed to be 
represented by his wages at the time he does his 
work. But by the work of the Exporting Trust, 
the purchasing power of his wages may be reduced 
between the date of his earning and the date of 
his spending, from the fact that a part of the sup- 



204 

ply he assisted to make lias been reduced by export, 
without a synchronous and automatic reduction of 
the demand, Avhich causes an increase in price, or, 
a reduction in tlie purchasing poAver of his wages. 

In these ways the wily plaintiffs cause an uneasi- 
ness among our wage-producers ; for, cut off by low 
wages on the one hand and by high prices on the 
other, industrious spirits do not receive an equita- 
ble reward. Honesty and personal integrity ''cut 
no ice.'' Physical and mental ability to do work 
well are not in it with foreign-trade trickery. And 
what turns the thoughtful to socialism and the 
thoughtless to anarch}^ is the grievous injustice of a 
situation, where a man is held good enough to pay 
taxes and help bear the other burdens of communal 
life, nay, is held to a strict accountability therefor, 
but is not good enough to be given his pro rata of 
all the employment furnished by providing for the 
country's wants. The Importing Trust sells our 
demand abroad and the Exporting Trust our sup- 
ply, destroying the equilibrium here between sup- 
ply and demand which otherwise would soon make 
life a stable thing in this fair land of ours, cut off 
gambling in stocks' and crops, and put a premium 
on steady morality. 

The socialism we believe in your Honors, is such 
as we have described, which would make the domes- 
tic market the property of those whose supplies 
were offered to it as their liquidated demands, call- 
ing for the supplies offered by their fellow Avage- 
producers in this country. And we have already 
said that what creates current socialism in this 
country is the fact that this property-right in the 
market "cuts no ice;" since these wily plaintiff's 
are allowed to appropriate our wage-producers' 
market made at wage-100 and sell its consequent 



295 

demand-100 to any bidder in the cost-20 world they 
please, and at any price they can get, thus killing 
the demand for American wage-producers. We do 
not see, your Honors, why the wage-producers who, 
by their association in a community create a mar- 
ket there, should not be considered to own their 
common market as much as they own their wages. 
And if this is socialism, your Honors, the learned 
counsel for these wily plaintiffs will have to make 
the best of it. Not only would this kind of social- 
ism, b}' rewarding it to the limit, keep individual 
initiative alive but it would also take care of all 
the weaklings. There would be no "survival of the 
fittest," in the sense that the unfit would perish and 
leave the fit them surviving. It would rather be 
"The leadership of the fittest and the followership 
of the unfit." The unfit Avould not perish but they 
would be improved. In the general employment 
which would prevail at high wages, there would be 
room for all workers, no matter of what grade. 
And if any fell by the way, they woud be kindly 
cared for; because the human heart is not hard 
where it is not necessarj^ to the life of the owner of 
the heart. And there Avould be enough to feed, 
clothe and shelter the weak in the abundance pre- 
vailing where every penny's worth of demand in 
the domestic market was reserved for the supply 
furnished by its wage-producers. 

\S^e have held up Mother England as an example 
of what follows from a doctrine different from ours, 
a doctrine which does not admit the exclusive right 
of the wage-producer to his domestic market and 
all the opportunities of employment which it gives 
him. By taking the yoke of the cousins of these 
wily plaintiffs, she has experienced what these wily 
])laintiffs are, viz., the agents of the back-track 



296 

movement in human development, of involution to- 
wards the narrower individualism of the old feudal 
times instead of evolution towards the broader na- 
tion. For as against a broad nationalism, these 
wily plaintiffs, both in effect predatory, aliens, 
stand for a narrower individualism; as against a 
wider and wider distribution of wealth, they stand 
for the gathering of wealth into fewer and fewer 
hands, as a swarm of self-asserting and strenuous 
individuals first drive the nation asunder into frag- 
ments and then absorb the fragments, the larger 
individuals finishing by swallowing all the smaller 
ones, until we have retraced our steps to the time 
of the earl and the duke, the fortified castle and the 
dungeon-tower, and the ragged and hungry retain- 
ers, huddled in the barracks, about the kitchen gar- 
den and in the quarters of the horses, cows, sheep, 
goats, and asses. This would surelv come from fol- 
lowing: the rule, "Everv man for himself; the devil 
take the hindmost." There is no brotherhood in 
this rule. It is a spear which knows no brother. 
It is the rule of the Big Stick. Broad intelligence 
is out. Brawn and cunning are in full command. 
It is a burro wins: with mole eves for the little dol- 
lar just ahead in the dirt, and a missing of the vis- 
ion of the concrete nation, upright, happy and 
wealthv. moral and strong, which would surely rise 
from following the rule, "All for each; each for 
all," and recosmizing the sacred rierht of each citi- 
zen to do as much work as would fall to his lot by 
dividing among all the citizens of the nation, ac- 
cording to their varied powers, the opportunities to 
work caused bv the necessities of the nation ; and to 
share in the fruit of this united production by a 
like division according to merit, of all the supply 
made bv the nation at work. These wily plaintiffs 



297 

stand not for the success of the industrious, the 
honest, the willing, and the true; but for the suc- 
cess of him whose talents are greatest in contrast- 
ing and playing the necessities of one human being 
over against the like necessities of another, with 
an incidental stab in the direction of making the 
necessities of each as dire as possible through the 
withholding of his food by intercepting his employ- 
ment. They represent the marauding elements in 
human nature. They browse upon the misfortunes 
of the weak. They block the avenues by which one 
wa2:e-producer may exchans^e his products with an- 
other; while they take toll from both on pain of 
starvation to the one who refuses to be levied UBon 
by these bria:ands of international trade. They 
make success depend upon the same qualities which 
thev impersonate. The one who is the most dili- 
gent peddler, the most adroit barscainer, the cun- 
uinsrest hawker and hood-winker, is the one whom 
th-ev decorate with their hiochest honors. So they 
chafPer, and dicker, and huckster, and hunt the 
earth around to find the weakest and the most mis- 
erable producer, in order to eet his product at the 
weakest and most miserable price and stand be- 
tween the stron<?'est and best producer, the man 
with the hammer in his hand and a hope in his 
heart, and the market upon which his activitv and 
his hope der>end. Thev play misery against happi- 
ness and coin the di^erenf^e between the happy 
man's happiness and his misery into a profit on an 
ii-nT>0T'tin<T or exr>ortins" deal: pnd thev call this 
""Buvinjor in the cheaT>est and sellinof in the dearest 
market." Ar»d so with the old "Devil catch the 
hindmost" rnlp in operation, it is the most violent, 
the most cnnnincr. the most unscrupulous, and the 
most strenuous who, by playing poverty, distress 



298 

and harrowing necessity against poverty, distress 
and harrowing necessity and pocketing the differ- 
ence between various degrees of misery, gather the 
fat of the earth into their store-houses, and so get 
the farthest on the road to riches. Quiet worth and 
industry do not count, ^except to offer a larger booty 
to these wily plaintiffs. If there is any value in 
these virtues shown by wage-producers, these plain- 
tiff's alone get it. And since as compared with the 
industrious and patient, honest and plodding Avage- 
producers, the members of these wily plaintiffs are 
few, to give a free hand to these wily plaintiffs, is 
slowly but surely to gather the wealth of the earth, 
wherever in au}^ wise now equitably distributed, 
back into the hands of the pushers and pullers, the 
j ostlers and shovers, the members of these wily 
plaintiffs, and bring back the days of vassalage and 
feudal tenures under barons and chiefs and bear- 
shooters as violent and harsh as those of old. But 
reverse the progress; cut off the international car- 
nage of these wil^^ plaintiffs, take away from the 
Big Sticks and the "Gluttons of the Lime-Light,'^ 
their power to coin violence and cunning, and the 
quiet and the industrious will bring their virtues to 
a ready market ; industry and lionesty will come to 
be the "coin of the realm'' wliich will purchase for 
their possessors a full share of all the good things 
wliich they assist in producing. There will be no 
pushing or pulling of mobs of unemployed ; but the 
A\'hole country will go rhythmically forward to 
higher planes of civilization and refinement, and 
we shall become the most moral, just and humane, 
as well as the most powerful of all nations, a nation 
which no longer sacrifices the good of the smallest 
to that of the greatest number, as the Cannibals of 
the South Sea Islands do, but which first chives to 



299 

each all the T\'ork he needs and then secures the 
greatest happiness of all by securing for each all 
the fruits of all the toil to which he turns a willing 



XXVI 

THE ASSAULT OF THE WILY PLAINTIFF^S COUNSEL 
UPON THE NEWSPAPERS OF THE COUNTRY WAS 
WHOLLY WITHOUT WARRANT AND UNJUSTIFIA- 
BLE. 

May it please your Honors, in their lengthy argu- 
ments before jouy counsel for both these wily plain- 
tiffs, the Importing Trust and the Exporting Trust, 
accused our newspapers, in behalf of the "extor- 
tions" of the "trusts,'' of being in league with the 
alleged "trusts" to maintain the tariff-dike without 
"revision." It is evident that learned counsel have 
not read the newspapers of late. If they had, they 
would observe that practically^ all the newspapers, 
of our great seaboard cities where "boards of trade" 
owned by these wily plaintiffs are located, and 
many of those inland, with one voice favor an early 
"revision" of the dike. We do not attack them on 
this account. Newspapers' must, according to cir- 
cumstances, take care of the interests of their con- 
stituents or their stockholders. They are neither 
to praise nor to blame for anything they print. 
They fill somebody's "long felt want," because fill- 
ing it is money in their pockets. If newspapers are 
run by stock companies and these stock companies 
are formed to pay dividends, the newspaper so run 
must take that side of this battle between American 
Production and these wily plaintiffs which will pay 



300 

the largest dividends. Now, wherever the "trusts," 
that is to say, some branch of this defendant, 
American Production, have the greater interests 
and furnish the larger constituency, the newspa- 
pers must stand by the "trusts." On the other 
hand, in our large seaboard importing cities, where 
the greater part of newspaper constituencies is 
made up of importing houses and their clerks and 
employees, the newspapers necessarily stand by 
these wily plaintiffs. And this is also true of many 
inland newspapers with Importing and Exporting 
Trust connections. Newspaper editorials in either 
direction should be totally discounted by all 
thoughtful citizens; and the latter should look the 
whole ground over and think and determine for 
themselves as to whether logically, a man should 
expect more for the country and its people from an 
organization like the wily plaintiff, the Importing 
Trust, for instance, that never produces a penny^s 
worth of wealth in this country, but merely awaits 
the time when there is wealth enough to skim off, as 
cream from our milk pans, while, through its news- 
papers it roots against high prices and the "trusts f 
an organization that never employs a dollar's 
worth of American labor, except for the purpose of 
storing and trucking our dollars out of the coun- 
try; and whose whole campaign against this de- 
fendant, American Production, is carried on with 
the aid of the covetousness, envy, and hatred of our 
thoughtless and often ignorant citizens ; or whether 
a man should expect more for his country from an 
organization like this' defendant, American Produc- 
tion, which, although stigmatized by the name of 
the "trusts," employs millions of Americans in its 
mills, pays them the highest wages in the world, 
maintains this as a wage-100 country against a 



301 

wage-20 world, creates billions of dollars worth of 
wealth every year from our natural stores, and lays 
out every penny of its earnings in further oppor- 
tunities to American wage-producers to realize 
their brightest hopes of a happy and care-free old 
age. 

The newspapers, your Honors, follow a very nat- 
ural course in speaking well of those who advertise 
the most liberally in their columns ; and when these 
advertisers are German Steamship Lines, it is very 
natural that they should speak well of German 
Agreements that make the German Steamship 
Lines carry heavier cargoes into our markets here, 
even though these same cargoes silence our own 
factories and snuff out like sickly candles the homes 
and hopes of thousands of our citizens. It is also 
very natural for such newspapers to speak earnest- 
ly for "revision" and for "reciprocity," and for any 
other device for increasing the gains of these wily 
plaintiffs, their exacting masters. We say that this 
is a very natural course, for the selfish course is 
the necessary course and therefore the most nat- 
ural. And yet we would not advise our people to 
throw away their Bibles just yet and pin their faith 
to newspapers who are compelled to pin themselves 
to the interests of the Importing Trust, or those of 
the other wily plaintiff, the Exporting Trust. 

And in this connection, although we have touched 
before upon the same topic, we cannot neglect the 
opportunity once more to expose in our own way 
this cruelly treacherous claim that higher prices 
are due to the vicious and malicious combinations 
in restraint of trade called the "trusts," otherwise 
our client, American Produtcion, the suffering 
host of its deadly parasite, the Importing Trust. 
Your Honors, these wily plaintiffs' are well 



302 

aware that the rise in prices, to which, to fire our 
people's hatred and cause them to aid in their 
own destruction, they so cunningly point, is world- 
wide, is not the work of American "trusts" and 
cannot be remedied here except by making the 
"price of coals' too high, and of flesh and blood 
too cheap." These wily plaintiffs know that the 
rise in prices of the present industrial era is the 
same sort of rise in prices that always follows' the 
general employment of all the people here at good 
wages. When labor is in such good demand it 
becomes dear as compared with money ; and money 
being therefore relatively cheap and products 
made by labor dearer because of the dearer labor 
that makes' them, it takes more money to buy 
goods. We might produce a formula stating the 
case in few words and short sentences, like this: 

When labor is dear, money is cheap; prices are 
high. 

When labor is cheap, money is' dear; prices are 
low. 

We could also reach the same point in another 
Avay, like this: 

When wages are high, demand is stronger than 
supDly, and prices rise. 

When wages are low, demand is weaker than 
suDiily, and prices fall. 

There is one peculiarity in the case, however, 
which should be noted, and that is when labor is 
in demand, wages rise more rapidly than prices; 
bnt when labor is not in demand, wages fall more 
rapidly than prices. This is' because the wage-pro- 
ducer or laborer stands between the property- 
producer or capitalist and the product. When 
deiiiand for products springs up, the property -pro- 
ducer must make terms with his Avage-producer 



303 

before he can get at the profit iu the product, and, 
measuring the profit ahead, and desiring to get 
into the marliet with his goods aliead of his com- 
petitor, he otters wages which will immediately 
tempt the wage-producer to do his work. On the 
other hand, when demand slackens, before the 
glut in the market is apparent and prices have 
had to fall also, it is the wage-producer who is 
first made to pay for the lessening demand by 
lower wages' or total idleness. It therefore hap- 
pens that it is the wage-producer who is first bene- 
fited when a higher tariff dike strengthens' demand 
and the first injured when '^revision" has spilled 
the American demand over the earth and drawn 
it away from our client, American Production. 

We hear the respectful chuckle of counsel for 
the wily plaintiffs and their soto voce exclamation 
of surprise that from our declaration that the 
rise in prices' has been world-wide we should so 
inconsequently turn to an explanation of how the 
tariff -dike causes prices to rise in this country. 
But, your Honors, we are not so inconsequent as 
we look. High wages in this country affect wages 
all over the world. For it must be remembered 
that, since we are a cost-100 country against a cost- 
20 world, the U\o billions' worth of goods which 
we are now annually importing, has as great a 
stimulation upon the call for labor in the outside 
world as the call for ten billions' worth of goods 
from our client American Prodviction would have 
upon the call for our wage-producers; and that 
would mean an increased demand for goods by 
Avorkers in the outside world equivalent to an in- 
creased demand by our workers upon our domes- 
tic market of ten billions of dollars annually. Is 
it surprising then that there should be a world- 



304 

^ylde increase jn prices as a direct result of the 
Dingley Law which so increased the consuming 
power of our country that it annually lodges in 
the shops of foreign nations the equivalent of a 
ten-billion-dollar order? 

One cannot help reflecting on the great loss in 
true civilization and in refinement in the better 
sense we are suffering now by the escapage yearly 
to other countries of this two-billion-dollar demand 
which could easily be responded to by our own 
wage-producers. And another thing should give 
us wholesome pause in this prodigality: We our- 
selves are feathering the arrow which will one day 
drink our blood. By sending abroad this ten-bill- 
ion dollar annual stimulus to foreign enterprise, 
we are refining their processes and reducing their 
industrial system more and more to such a per- 
fect bit of machinery that they will be able soon 
to do what they have never yet done, viz., avail 
themselves to the limit of the great difference be- 
tween their wage-scales and ours and bring their 
cost of production into scientific harmony with 
their opportunity; which would soon make us 
choose between national annihilation and the to- 
tal exclusion of foreign imports competing with 
our own products. 

Your Honors, alluding again to combinations 
in restraint of trade, the greatest combination in 
restraint of trade, that is our domestic trade, in 
this whole world is this wily plaintiff, the Import- 
ing Trust. For the wily plaintiff has existed in 
this country so long and has been identified so 
much with its own hypocritical crusades against 
the "trusts'^ and high prices, otherwise as we have 
shown, high wages, that, by a sort of tacit sym- 
pathy, a wireless telegraphy of sordid sentiment, 



305 

it has made part of itself all the pompous doc- 
trinaires in the country, so that each of them, in 
tearing down American prosperity and building 
up foreign prosperity, is just as anxious to do the 
work of the wily plaintiff as if he also shared 
directly in the division of that part of the Ameri- 
can savings-bank fund which, by its anti-"trust,'^ 
"tariff -revision" crusades, the wily plaintiff every 
now and then snatches from our wage-producers. 
One of these doctrinaires came off of a European 
steamship the other day, probably warm from the 
affectionate embrac-c^ of the German Kaiser and 
his hypnotism of the Sternberg brand; and said 
doctrinaire had no sooner left the gang-plank 
than an Importing Trust newspaper got hold of 
him and drew from him these wise words : 



"I think that the present temper of the people will 
demand not merely the usual conventional platform 
pledges, but something definite in the way of constructive 
legislation. 

"I think that, in the first place, the time has come 
when the Dingley tariff has got to he revised, in the in- 
terest of business itself, and not in any sense as an attack 
on business or as a disturbance to business. It seems 
to me clear that the vast majority of the people of the 
country of all parties virtually accept the protectionist 
principle, but financial and commercial developments of 
the last decade make it necessary to face without delay a 
revision of the existing tariff, and this revision not to be 
up — as some people are insane enough to suppose — but 
down. This can be accomplished without the slightest 
injury to business if it is done in a fair-minded and 
scientific fashion. The expanding business of the coun- 
try needs every dollar to be a circulating medium, and 
the collection in tariff taxes of a larger surplus, which is 
withdrawn from the normal course of business, and offers 
a constant temptation to legislative extravagance, is un- 
statesmanlike and uneconomic. In my judgment, there- 
fore, the Republican Party will be held by the voters and 
all the best sentiment of the party itself to a definite 
pledge of tariff revision." 

Oh, your Honors, when will these scholastic 
gentlemen, who don't know a yard-stick from a 



peck measure, learn that a mortar-board hat, a 
student's gown and a dip don't give them any li- 
cense to ''dip" into business matters. Fools rush 
in where angels fear to tread, your Honors, and 
here is this scion of a great college, who never had 
anything to do with the drafting of a tariff law^ in 
the world and knows nothing about the complex 
construction of the Dingley Dike, saying that the 
Dike can be ''revised'' downwards "without the 
slightest injury to business," "if it is done in a 
fair-minded and scientific fashion," when men who 
have labored over the question for years and years 
and have some idea of the sort of a job a man 
has to tackle when he tries to make the same 
stream flow up hill and down hill, at the same 
place, and the same moment of time, tremble at 
the mere thought of it and know as they know 
they are living that they never can approach that 
Dike with the declared purpose of "revising" it 
downward without bringing our whole business 
building down about our ears in a single night! 
But the hypocrisy of the claim of this chattel of 
the Importing Trust, that he believes in protection 
or in any tariff -dike that will save American in- 
dustry from drowning, appears from a compari- 
son of his words just quoted with those of the 
Democratic Favtj, the open and frank enemy of 
Protection, as set out in its national platform in 
1904: 



"We denounce protectionism as a robbery of the many 
to enrich the few and we favor A TARIFF LIMITED TO 
THE NEEDS OF THE GOVERNMENT ECONOMIC- 
ALLY, EFFECTIVELY AND CONSTITUTIONALLY 
ADMINISTERED." 



Thus, the Democratic Party, the Party of abso- 
lute free trade. Now listen to Dr. Nixie Butter, 



r>o 



President of the great Coluiiibariuin College, as 
just quoted: 

"The expanding business of the country needs every 
dollar to be a circulating medium, AND THE COLLEC- 
TION IN TARIFF TAXES OF A LARGER SURPLUS, 
WHICH IS WITHDRAWN FROM THE NORMAL 
COURSE OF BUSINESS and offers a constant temptation 
to legislative extravagance, is unstatesmanlike and un- 
economic. ' ' 

Both the gentleman of the cap and gown and 
the old free trade donkey, the Democratic Party, 
the political cats-paw of these wily plaintiffs, 
are in accord in the statement that the tariff 
should be no larger than sufficient for the "needs 
of the Government economically administered." 
And the gentleman with the dip thinks the sur- 
plus in the Treasury should be dipped out by 
drowning American industry with a downward 
"revised" dike — ^just like the Importing Trust ex- 
actly — although "revising" the dike upward would 
prevent a surplus more surely than a "revision" 
downward. Isn't it rather a singular coincidence, 
your Honors, that, if this gentleman is a truly and 
really protectionist, to cut off the surplus he 
should demand the sort of a treatment of the dike 
which will surely throw our savings bank fund 
into the clutch of the Importing Trust, instead 
of a treatment which would as surely cut off that 
horrid surplus and at the same time double our 
savings bank fund in a few years? Are you a 
good protectionist of your garden when you take 
down the fence which already is so low that the 
cattle reach over and crop the ears out of your 
sweet corn, rather than build it up so high that 
the cattle cannot steal any of your vegetables at 
all. If you did not see the face of the man w^ho 
said it but only heard him say through an opaque 



305 

screen, that the fence of such a garden should be 
taken down to improve the drainage, would you 
not think it was the owner of the cattle or his 
man Friday who spoke, rather than the owner of 
the garden, your Honors? We think you would 
think it was the party, whoever he was, who 
wanted the cattle to steal more corn and calf 
bages, if he said that, to give the garden better 
drainage, the fence must be "revised" downwards 
rather than upwards, when the fence had nothing 
at all to do with the drainage. And this is what 
this Dr. Nixie is your Honors, simply the man 
Friday of the Importing Trust, which will get 
our whole industrial garden the moment we "re- 
vise" downward the Dingley Dike. 

But the case against this man Friday of the wily 
plaintiff, the Importing Trust, is still worse, 
either for his information or his frankness, when 
the fact is known that there is' no surplus 
in the Treasury "withdrawn from the normal 
course of business;" and for the reason that, 
through the medium of the banks who deposit 
bonds to secure them, these surplus treasury funds 
are sent into circulation again and the "business" 
of the country does not suffer at all, from there 
being such a surplus; for "business" uses it. Fur- 
thermore, your Honors', the surplus in the Treas- 
ury, even if it were not actually in business circu- 
lation in the way described, being less than flOO,- 
000,000, is not a circumstance to the reserves held 
constantly out of circulation by our savings' and 
other banks. If keeping money from circulation 
were the only fault to find with this tariff-dike 
which is the life and soul of all American busi- 
ness, why do we not contrive some way of first 
getting back into circulation the savings* bank and 



other reserves, which aggregate ten times as much 
as the Treasury- surplus which is really in circu- 
lation? Your Honors, w^hen there are so many 
better and surer ways of keeping the treasury sur- 
plus in circulation than drowning out American 
industry through a ^^revised'' dike, and yet the 
downward "revision" of the dike is said to be the 
only thing for the case, this being too the only 
method by which the dipping out of the treasury 
surplus will at the same time dip out the people's 
savings into the till of the wily plaintiff, the Im- 
porting Trust, it does look as if the real object of 
thus' dipping out the treasury surplus was the 
turning over of our savings fund to the Importing 
Trust. We do not believe college presidents are 
fools, your Honors. We would far rather believe 
they are knaves in this kind of tariff "revision" 
talk, and we frankly do. There is some selfish 
interest somewhere in their horizon, which they 
think will be better seized by standing with the 
Importing Trust than with the American-Produc- 
tion party, whether that interest be social or finan- 
cial ; whether it be the fact that their liberal back- 
ers in their educational ambitions are members 
of the Importing Trust, or they merely want their 
backs comfortably scratched by some of the sa- 
vants, chattels of the Importing Trust, whose 
laudation is grateful to their senses — such senses 
as we are permitted to suppose they have, after 
having demonstrated to us that they think the in- 
dustries of this country can be drowned dead by 
a tariff-dike downward revision and at the same 
time be built up higher by a tariff-dike downward 
revision. To think of it, your Honors! A man 
trusted to teaching the young ideas of this country 
how to shoot, who does not honestly know that, 



by a lower tariff, to iuerease competition between 
a cost-100 country and a cost-20 world is* to destroy 
civilization in the cost-100 country by exactly the 
increase in competition! Do you wonder, your 
Honors, that we charitably said this man did not 
know a yard-stick from a peck measure? And yet 
this is the kind of an impressive Buttinsky which 
the Importing Trust is always employing to stalk 
American industries with. He is a large bass- 
drum but he is little music. He may impress the 
boys of business; but the gTown-ups don't see any- 
thing but bombous pomposity in his sonorosity 
and in his cap and gow^n; and as for his dip, it 
isn't worth in business as much as a single one 
of the other kind of dip made of good tallow. 

Have you ever noticed, your Honors, how these 
wily plaintiffs and their chattels loftily ignore 
profits as the mainspring of business when they 
are snaring in the people? You would not think the 
Importing Trust, or its wily associate in this case, 
the Exporting Trust, would ever stoop to so "sel- 
fish" a thing as a profit. For when an American 
industry objects to "revision" downwards, or to 
a reciprocity treaty because either would surely 
take th-e profits out of its business, the wily plain- 
tiffs, by their newspapers, say it is "selfish," it 
is "narrow," and it w^ould set back a great good to 
the whole country just to save its own contracted 
"interests." If an American industry is not sel- 
fish in the direction of a profit, it is as good as 
a dead industry, your Honors. And the American 
industry that, being a cost-100 industry, did not 
object to being exposed by "revision" or "recipro- 
city" to competition with a cost-20 world would 
be worthy of its fate. Yet these wily plaintiffs 
make believe the world is not so made up that 



311 

the first business of any one, man or mouse, is to 
see that there is no interruption in the current 
of food into his stomach ; and these wily plaintiffs 
are so elusive, appearing now as a missionary, now 
as a clergyman, and again as a college president, 
or a professor of economics, and again as a board 
of trade, or a manufacturers' association, with all 
the art and address of a Mephistopheles, that they 
often deceive the elect themselves and cause other- 
Avise sound and sensible people to fall in with the 
idea that our business men are very wicked to be so 
"selfish" as to stand in the Avay of "the greatest 
good of the greatest number'- and incidentally to 
the floAving of our savings bank fund into the pock- 
ests of these wily plaintiffs. But, nevertheless, 
your Honors, it is our idea that this whole question 
as to our tariff dike is a simple business question, 
for business men to settle. It is upon the shoulders 
of business men that the destinies of this whole 
countr}^ rest. And we understand a business man 
to be any one, man or woman, who is directly inter- 
ested in our great client, American Production; 
and this covers every ANage-producer, every prop- 
erty-producer, and every adjunct-producer in this 
country ; and these embrace our AA'hole active popu- 
lation. And the country's pay-roll, your Honors, as 
Ave think Ave have said before, is not merel}^ the list 
of our Avage-producers AA^ho are employed in our 
A^arious industries, but it is the entire list of all our 
active people covering everybody AA-ho works for a 
return, Avhether you call it Avages, salary or profits. 
And our Avage-fund is the entire volume of money 
AN liich changes hands' from day to day, exchanged by 
our oAvn people for American goods or for American 
serAices of AA^hatever kind. From this standpoint 
of ours tlie Avasre-A^olume is the business-volume of 



312 

the country. ]No\v, your Honors, you cannot "re- 
vise'' our tariff-dike downwards against the cost-20 
world and oppose its raging flood of surplus cost-20 
with our cost-100 products without supplanting the 
services of millions of our workers by the services 
of workers abroad, to the abrupt contraction of our 
pay-roll, our wage-fund, and our business-volume. 
And, on the other hand, to save your lives, you can- 
not build our tariff-dike to heaven without shutting 
out foreign goods, employing our own people at 
higher wages', and increasing the wage-fund, the 
wage-volume and the business-volume at the same 
time. From circumference to centre, from bark to 
pith, and from pith back to bark again, this Ameri- 
can forest monarch is a business tree and the dead- 
liest woodsmen in our whole horizon, who threaten 
with the sharpest of axes, to reduce our tree to com- 
mercial logs, are these wily plaintiffs, the Import- 
ing Trust and the Exporting Trust. 



XXVII 

The object of the present suit is not only to 
enjoin the plaintiffs against the further 
prosecution of their nefarious trade but as 
well to determine an intelligent plan of 
national development. 

May it please your Honors, we are loath to trench 
further upon your valuable time in this matter ; but 
we feel that, in passing upon the merits of the di- 
verse contentions here adduced, all we have said 
would be of small value to this Court unless we at 
least made an attempt to formulate some system 



313 

according to which we may live in the future. Your 
Honors, the desire of every nation, considered as a 
concrete entity, must be to go forward to a more 
prosperous condition; and to put away from na- 
tional experience as far as possible all those vicissi- 
tudes which in the unripe past have now and again 
brought the nation to weakness, despair and in- 
ternal woe. But the nation, as a nation, seems to 
have no memory, your Honors; and no matter 
through what dreadful experience it may have 
passed, and no matter how obvious are the causes 
by avoiding which such experiences never could 
have taken place, or could take place again, the na- 
tion as a nation sees them not. Considered as a 
nation, it has no association of ideas', no recording 
brain-cells. And that accounts for the fact that, 
knowing their book and their role, after having 
cast the country into the depths of distress as they 
have done many times, and after having plundered 
our people so cruelly that at last they have arisen 
in their blind might, cast out the plaintiffs, or 
either of them, and once more built the broken 
dike anew, these wily plaintiffs, particularly the 
wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, await with 
such certainty and serenity the lapse of a few brief 
years ere renewing their assault upon the people's 
citadel, the tariff -dike, knowing full well that, when 
a comparatively short time has passed, those who 
took part with most pangs and heart-wrenchings 
in the last industrial funeral will have passed away 
or have left but a minority of their like behind ; and 
others, young and foolish, with no recollection of 
the vivid destruction which attended the last suc- 
cess of these wily plaintiffs, will have come into the 
places of power to control the fate of this devoted 



3U 

land; and that upon these fresh and fervid young 
minds, largely suffering from megalocephalus 
adolescenSj they can make anew the warm impres- 
sion of enviousness and covetousness', by pointing 
to the ^^trusts/' our client, American Production, 
as the source of the greenness of our new and suc- 
culent crop of voters, and the condition which com- 
pels them to earn their money before spending it 
for lollipops. It is in this way, because the nation 
has no memory, and because me^ with memories' 
must dwindle and die, that these fell disturbers of 
our happiness and wreckers of our homes are en- 
able to get one inning after another before our 
people, and knock the ball over the fence. They 
have reduced the operation to an exact science. 
They know just how long to lie low after the last 
robbery; just when to crawl into view again, and 
just when and how strongly to turn on the cam- 
paign for tariff' "revision"; just how many college 
professors and other heavy intellectual guns they 
need to have interviewed, with their portraits' in the 
papers, emitting fire, smoke, lava, and red-hot cin- 
ders against the "exploded fallacy of protection;" 
just when to turn on the full newspaper chorus 
against the "trusts" and the psychological moment 
at A\'liich to say, "The people are sternly demanding 
an early revision of the tariff," a la Dr. Nixie But- 
insky, President, etc. x\nd it is because Ave older 
fry must soon pass from the scene and leave our 
youngsters to be preyed upon and victimized, as 
Ave ourselves before them were preyed upon and vic- 
timized, by this brace of arch bunco-steerers and 
green-goods' men, the Importing and Exporting 
Trusts, that Ave desire to inaugurate a system where- 
l)y the y()iiug(M' generation may be uniformly in- 



315 

structed in this most momentous matter and avoid 
falling into the net of these century-old conspira- 
tors, these wily plaintiffs, the only remaining slave- 
traders of the world, against whose lust for trade 
even our cradles are not safe. 

To this end, your Honors, we desire to formulate 
such a statement of the true conditions' of trade in 
this world as will appeal to the understanding of 
every fairly intelligent person, of whatever sex, 
color, or previous condition of ignorance and con- 
ceit. Aud this is the direction our efforts shall 
take. 

The one thing needful for national prosperity is 
a plenty of opportunities to produce at wages in 
order to consume at prices. In fact, these oppor- 
tunities to work are the only condition of our exist- 
euce. But, fortunately, the natural desires and 
necessities' of humanity furnish these opportunities ; 
and the opportunities arising in every community 
from til is cause are sufficient to furnish the people 
of the communities all the opportunities necessary 
to earn the livelihood of that community. All 
that takes' place is, by means of money or wages, the 
exchange among the people of the opportunities to 
work furnished by the people. In producing a cer- 
tain form of goods, each worker works for himself 
directly and for all the rest of the community by 
proxy. In other words, each worker is the active 
agent of production of the entire community. If 
all communities had attached to them a sufficient 
amount of soil and of forest and mining land, fro 
produce the food and the basic materials of produc- 
tion for the community, and if no part of the prod- 
uct were squandered in foreign trade, and no draft 
on local labor were cancelled by an invading for- 
eign supply nothing could prevent each such com- 



316 

munity from being forever in the midst of plenty 
and happiness. There would not be excessive 
wealth on the one hand nor great poverty on the 
other. The trouble with us* is we did not know 
enough to begin this way. We are away off the 
track ; and to get on the track will cost a good deal 
of steady work. To get on the track would need a 
prohibitory dike against incoming foreign supply 
and a prohibitory dam against outgoing domestic 
supply. That would bring us around automatically 
and in a jiffy to the ideal condition of which we 
have just spoken. Let us see why from a very cold 
business point of view we need that dike against 
foreign supply. 

We have to have property-producers employing 
wage-producers, do we not? And property-pro- 
ducers will work in our country if they can make 
as good a profit there as elsewhere, or a little 
better, will they not? Well, what would happen 
to their capital if, having settled among us we 
by a low dike exposed them for their eost-100 
goods' to cost-20 foreign competition? Would not 
their capital go abroad in the form of payments 
for giods sold our people by the wily plaintiff, 
the Importing Trust? At any rate, in competi- 
tion with cost-20 goods the capital laid out in cost- 
100 goods would not get back to our property-pro- 
ducers. That part of their capital represented 
by the labor-cost in their goods, would be spent 
in our markets by our wage-producers for Im- 
porting Trust cost-20 goods, and would go out of 
the country to the property-producers abroad, 
whose capital and wliose profits would thus get 
back to them in the shape of the capital of our 
own property -producers which had been spent as 
wages; and the cost-100 goods made by our prop- 



317 

erty-producers would either remain unsold or be 
sold at cost-20 also, and so at a loss of 80% of the 
actual cost. But in any event, a tariff-dike down- 
ward-prevision" would end with the lodging of 
our capital in the cost-20 world outside. For 
what our sensible property-producers would do, 
the moment a downward "revision" by Congress 
was certain, would be to close all their factories 
and take w^hat capital they could .save and go 
abroad with it in to the cost-20 world, build plants 
there and join the general assault upon our sav- 
ings-bank fund; then when our people had awak- 
ened from their hypnotic slumber and realized 
that our "trusts" w^ere American Production as 
a wiiole; and had once more driven the money- 
changers of these wily plaintiffs from the Tem- 
ple of American Industry and banged the door 
shut with a tariff -dike higher than ever, our ex- 
iled property-producers, having saved some of our 
money for us by joining the Importing Trust in 
its looting of our treasure house, could come back 
and open their American factories again. 

As we have said before, there is no doubt that 
many of our property-producers have already 
started factories abroad, both to get inside the 
tariff-dikes of foreign countries, and to be ready 
for a "revision" of our dike and to share in the bene- 
fit of joining" the Importing Trust. It seems to us, 
your Honors, as if we had clearly shown that capi- 
tal cannot work in a cost-lOO country in competi- 
tion with a cost-20 world. And it also seems to 
us that unless capital settles in the place 'of the 
h)wev^f cost of its' goods, it will be in danger of be- 
ins: scattered in the way we have described in our 
own case. We, therefore, submit the folowing prin- 
ciple as the first of our general system : 



318 

1. Capital desiring a given market for its output must 
finally locate in the area of lowest cost of production for 
that market. 

It would seem to us, your Honors, that any na- 
tion looking for the philosopher's stone of pros- 
perity, would be attracted by the principle just 
stated. For a nation's prosperity must surely be 
directly in proportion to the proportion, distribu- 
ted among its own workers, of the opportunities 
to work caused by the needs of its' own people; 
and to have such opportunities to work, it must 
liave within its borders enough busy capital en- 
gaged in property -production to employ the great- 
est possible number of its wage-producers. But 
to have such busy capital some steps must be 
taken to protect it against imports from countries 
whose cost is lower, whether from climate, from 
greater industrial maturity or from cheap wage- 
producers. The device which has been generally 
adopted to take away from foreign property-pro- 
ducers their advantage in lower cost, is that of a 
tariff-dike, such as our own. But whether the tar- 
iffs of other countries, by being so high as to 
make the home country the area of lowest cost of 
production, have answered the principle or not, 
our own tariff-dike has never risen to that height 
of common sense; for its only obiect, as declared 
bv leadinii' li^rhts of the Republican Party, is to 
equalize the foreign wage-cost with the American 
and not to give the American a better chance in 
his own market. The American has been too hos- 
pitable; he has stood up so straight in his hospi- 
falitv that he has leaned over backward and been 
foolishly and at least not humanely unjust to 
himself. There is no good reason why the people 
of a countrv should not be best entitled to their 



319 

own country and the to al wealth represented by 
its domestic market. But our property-producers', 
and through them our wage-producers, by fixing 
our tariff-dike only high enough to give Ameri- 
cans as good a right to their own market as peo- 
ple abroad, are left exposed to a destructive com- 
petition from a cost-20 world. The fine Italian 
hand of the Importing Trust, the wily plaintiff 
herein, is visible in this, your Honors. It never 
slumbers or sleeps; and its lobbies in Washington 
fight every inch of the ground which American 
Production tries to wrench from it, even though 
our client struggles for but the merest justice to 
our property and wage-producers. And so our 
tariff -dike is built so low that every improvement 
or economy in methods of production abroad is 
reflected in a great deluge of foreign goods bound- 
ing over the dike and sowing the seeds of idleness 
and hard times among our workers. A merely 
protective tariff of this nature can have no place 
in a scientific system aiming at continued pros- 
perity. For since it is only a set-off for the time 
being against lower wages abroad, without leav- 
ing any margin against advantages to foreign pro- 
ducers in more compact organization or cheap- 
er materials, it may leave our market exposed to 
a frightful inundation within any given twenty- 
four hours. An inundation of this sort is going 
on now, even while our college presidents are opin- 
ing that the tariff -dike should be "revised" down- 
wards. Yea, your Honors, we have truly spoken 
in saying that the wily plaintiff, the Importing 
Trust never slumbers or sleeps. It never for a 
single second in the year takes its eye off of our 
savings-bank fund. It is a burglar that never for- 
gets its burgle. 



320 

The principle we have just stated, your Honors, 
as to the necessary location of capital where it can 
get the lowest cost in production, applies universal- 
ly; but it does not hint to us any rule to follow 
in determining whether its operation at any given 
point would be harmful to capital located there. 
We know as a fact that captial cannot remain 
fixed at any point except Avhere other capital can- 
not undercut its market. It must gr aviate, as 
a matter of course, to the area affording the lowest 
cost of production for its market. But, as a final 
proposition, where must these areas of lowest cost 
be? Why, your Honors, where else than the places 
where cost of subsistence is the lowest? Of course, 
your Honors, there is subsistence and subsistence. 
There is subsistence for the man and subsistence for 
the mouse; and our profound political economists 
tell us that it pays better to feed the large, intelli- 
gent, active man than it does the smaller and more 
ignorant one, even though the latter eats but a frac- 
tion as much; because the larger and better man 
does enough more work to pay for the difference in 
the food bill. But then, your Honors, we may dis- 
count differences in individual workmen and say 
that, when we say that his cost of subsistence is 
the cost of his production, the workman to whom 
we refer is the perfect workman in his craft, when 
the last word has been said and the last deed done 
towards making the workman just muscular, skil- 
ful, and intelligent enough to do the greatest 
amount of work on the least subsistence, a greater 
amount of muscle, skill, or intelligence being of no 
advantage and a subsistence better either in qual- 
ity or quantity being of no avail. This being grant- 
ed, then, our next step is to inquire how to deter- 
mine where these favored places of lowest cost of 



821 

subsistence are. Of course, the answer must be, 
Those places where soils are the richest and deepest, 
where suns are the kindest and most constant, and 
where agriculture is most mature. Kow, as to the 
specific localities where these soils and suns are to 
be found, we can only make a broad general rule. 
We know that soil is simply animal and vegetable 
mold; that is, the remains of organic life; and nat- 
urally such mold will be the deepest and richest 
where organic life is and for a long time has been 
the most abundant. But these localities must also 
be where suns are kind and constant; for the sun's 
heat is at the root of all organic life, and might 
almost be said to be its creator and sustainer. 

Aside from food, the sun's heat, too, whether 
greater or less, figures in the cost of subsistence; 
for the cost of clothing and shelter vary with it. 
Here, then, is a clue for us to follow; and if we 
find where the sun is the kindest and most con- 
stant, we will know where the cost of subsistence 
is naturally the lowest; and to do this in a broad 
general way is the easiest thing in the world. For 
if we are north of the equator, all we have to do is 
to travel towards the south to learn that, as we go, 
the sun becomes stronger and stronger, summer 
longer and longer, and, as a matter of course, win- 
ters become shorter and shorter, until we have 
passed the tropical line and come to a land of per- 
petual summer. If, on the other hand, we should 
turn about and go northward, we would find shorter 
and shorter summers and longer and longer winters 
until we arrived at a point of perpetual ice and 
snow. Now remembering that degrees of latitude 
are counted from 1 at the equator to 90 at the poles, 
we can easily state the rule, cost of subsistence 
varies directly with the latitude between the poles 



822 

and the tropics. Thiy iy a very broad, general rule 
which we may use later, remembering in connection 
with it that, within the tropics, at least theoretic- 
ally, there is a uniformity of solar heat and of fer- 
tile soil. 

But we are still very imperfect in methods of 
production. We are unripe industrial creatures; 
and wages the world over vary in the degree to 
which they return to wage-producers the muscular 
and nervous fibre consumed in producing; this in- 
equality arising from the way in which our present 
system abandons helpless workers to the results of 
that withering competition between merchants, 
which plays one man's worst necessities against an- 
other's; and because of these things we must no- 
tice that pay-rolls vary, not uniformly according to 
cost of subsistence, but according to the degree of 
congestion of wage-producers upon the various 
fields of industry, and the degree to which foreign 
competition has been added to crowd wage-produc- 
ers to a point where they are gradually being de- 
fibred and exterminated; which, as the result of 
Free Trade, is the case of so many British workers 
at the present time. It is very plain that before the 
industrial world has fought out its battle and all 
methods of production become the same and wage- 
producers have been brought to a uniform condi- 
tion, there will be a long time in which cost of sub- 
sistence will not correspond to the pay-roll, and 
that, as far as the property-producer is concerned, 
it would be nearer the truth to say. The cost of the 
pay-roll is the cost of production, than to say. Cost 
of subsistence is the cost of production, although, in 
the fullness of time, the latter statement will be uni- 
versally true. For the present, therefore, it will be 
correct to say that the pay-roll represents the cost 



r^23 

of subsistence; that is, sucli subsistence as the wage- 
producer may enjoy. Now, inasmuch as it is the 
wages paid to producers and spent by them in the 
market which exactly determines the volume of 
"business," the pay-roll is the measure of a coun- 
try's business. We are now ready to draft the next 
section of our rule or ''law" indicating the move- 
ment of capital, something in this form: 

2. Cost of subsistence is cost of production and is 
represented by pay-rolls, which are the measure of what 
is called "business." 

And from what we discussed together a few mo- 
ments ago, we may add another section, like this : 

3. Outside of the tropics, naked cost of subsistence 
varies directly with latitude; while within the tropics it 
is uniform and lowest. 

Ah, your Honors, we hear once more the sneer- 
ing yet musical titter of counsel for these waly 
plaintiffs; and again comes the stage whisper of 
counsel for the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, 
saying that, because the enervating climate of the 
tropics kills energy, the tropics never have com- 
peted and never can compete with the temperate 
zones. This is only a continuance of the tickling 
tactics of these wily plaintiffs by which they try to 
make us so pleased with ourselves and them that 
we will tear down our tariff-dike and add to their 
private fortunes. But we have a few remarks to re- 
ply to this tickle w^hich we beg humbly to submit. 

In the first place, what man has done, man can 
do. Massive ruins long buried in the tropics cause 
us to wonder w^hy, if man did that sort of w^ork in 
the tropics in times past, he cannot do as well or 
better noT\\ Is the sleeping sickness any w^orse in 
the tropics now than then? 



:^24 

In the second place, tliere are now living in the 
tropics many, many millions of strong, industrious 
and intelligent workers, upon whom the torrid heat 
makes no apparent impression for the worse. They 
are called coolies. They do anything in the world 
you ask them to do and do it well. And they do it 
for from 2c. to 10c. a day. 

In the third place, it is found that it is not the 
heat but bad insects, miasmas, and habits, which 
make the tropics worse for whites than blacks ; and 
that all these things can be so corrected as to make 
the tropics as healthful for the Caucasian as the 
temperate zones. On this subject. Col. William C. 
Gorgas, of our boys in khaki, spoke, in June, 1907, 
at Cornell University, as follows: 

"I think that sanitation can now show that any popu- 
lation coming into the tropics can protect itself against 
disease by measures that are both simple and inexpensive; 
that life in the tropics will be more healthful than in the 
temperate zones; and that gradually within the next two 
or three centuries tropical countries, which offer a much 
greater return for a man's labor than do the temperate 
zones, will be settled by the white races, and that again 
the centres of wealth, civilization and population will be 
in the tropics, as they were in the dawn of history, rather 
than in the temperate zones as at present." 

In his report on health conditions upon the Isth- 
mus for July, 1907, dated August 14, at Ancon, the 
same gentleman says: 

"There has been no quarantinable disease of any kind 
originating on the Isthmus. The last case of yellow fever 
in the city of Panama occurred in November, 1905, 
twenty months ago; the last case on the Isthmus in May, 
1906, fourteen months ago." 

And this report in spite of the fact that there 
were there on the Isthmus 38,000 men digging the 
Big Canal, exposed to those terrible tropical suns 
of which, when it pooh-poohs our dike as a protec- 



325 

tion against tropical production, the Importing 
Trust makes so much. The same report says that 
the death rate among the Canal employes for 1907 
was but 16 per thousand, a mortality but a little 
over one-third as high as that of Shreveport, Louis- 
iana, in this land which turns up its nose so high at 
the sickliness of the tropics. 

So much for this expert's opinion and for his offi- 
cial report on this subject; but can we not add 
something from our ow^n experience? Even now, 
without any special measures to improve tropical 
health, can the worst tropical countries in the world 
be much w^orse than our own climate, with its siz- 
zling heat in summer and its wizzening cold in 
winter? Will not our heat prostrations, our chol- 
era morbuses and general debility of summer, and 
our throat and pulmonary diseases of winter run 
tropical fatalities pretty close? 

In the fourth place, all tropical countries of any 
extent can show us high table-lands, where even 
Caucasians, w^ithout any acclimatizing, can work 
with the greatest comfort and safety; and, in the 
tropics as a w^hole, there is a total of such table- 
lands large enough for all the factories on earth 
at the present time, Avith enough such lands left 
over to accommodate the world's growth for a thou- 
sand years ; and these factory sites are only a half- 
hour's trolley ride from levels where food is grown 
in true tropical cheapness. 

In the fifth place, with the tropics remaining as 
unhealthful as counsel for the wily paintiffs now 
say they are, tariff-dike "revision" would compel 
wage-producers to look for work in such countries. 
For here and there the tropics would be exploited 
by industrial captains from the temperate zones 
where competition had become sharp, who would 



326 

out into tempera le-zoDc markets and throw wage- 
producers ont of employment; and these wage-pro- 
ducers thus made idle and without hope of re-em- 
ployment at home, even though the chances of long 
life in the tropic's w^ere against them, would wander 
in greater or less numbers into tropical countries 
and take up work there. For even in this and 
other non-tropical countries, people w^ork in sugar 
refineries, in steamship holds, at needle grinding, 
and steel puddling, and in other deadly employ- 
ments, well knowing that their work will kill them 
soon. And W'hy would not desperately idle wage- 
producers risk the tropics? 

So much for the littleness of the tropics as an 
adversary of temperate climates. 

But again the quiet cackle of the learned counsel 
for the Impor-ting Trust. He whispers that to be- 
lieve what we say about cost of production varying 
directly with latitude would make the South in our 
country the early ruler of us all. And so it will 
prove, your Honors ; in wealth and population. But 
the population will go there from abroad, as it is 
going now ; and from the North, as it is also going 
now. Let the tariff-dike be raised higher instead of 
cut dow^n louver, and our own Sunny South will 
bloom as never before. She can coin her climate 
into shining ducats and, if the dear girl pleases, witli 
her golden stores, soon purchase the whole bleak 
North at auction. 

And the gravitation of our Northern capital and 
population to the South will keep on until the South 
is the centre and hub of all the wealth, intelligenc(N 
and beauty of this country ; and the tide will never 
turn until, population becoming over-dense there, 
the price of land will rise and so raise the cost of 
production in the South that the portions of the 



327 

country nearest its confines can produce as cheaply 
as there; whereupon population will become dense 
also in the new region ; and so margin after margin 
next to the densest population will be taken up and 
made as dense, until the whole country will have be- 
come homogeneous in wealth and population. With 
a higher tariff-dike and the cutting off of Cuban, 
Porto Kican, Hawaiian, and Philippine competition, 
this must be the natural course. But cut down the 
dike ever so little and tropical cheapness will over- 
shadow our South as it does our North and its day 
of glory will be indefinitely postponed. 

And, your Honors, "revise" downwards the tariff 
dikes of all countries, and you make the whole trop- 
ical belt the "Sunny South'' of the earth, and all the 
capital of the world would gravitate thither and 
all the movable population would follow. Unless 
tariff-dikes were universally restored as against the 
tropics, the destruction to life and to property val- 
ues in the temperate zones would be cataclysmal. 
The mortality among the young and the adult weak 
would be like a continuous massacre. And the mi- 
gration on the one hand and the slaughter on the 
other would go on until nothing was left of the tem- 
perate zones but wildernesses inhabitated by sav- 
ages, with faint traditions of civilization; and the 
wildernesses would be owned by absent grandees 
and ruled by hired cut-throats from medieval for- 
tresses and castles. This is a sure thing, your 
Honors; and what can we think of our people, if, 
at the command of the Importing Trust, and to 
take refuge from our client, American Production, 
they consent to go a single inch along that down- 
hill road! 

To return now to the construction of our system, 
we are aware, vour Honors that what we have said 



328 

is a broad generalization. Cost of production cer- 
tainly must vary with latitude in the average case; 
but we shall anticipate the next chuckle of wily 
plaintiff's counsel and say that as between any given 
area in the tropics and a similar area outside of the 
tropics ; or between similar areas, one in a lower and 
the other in a higher latitude, other circumstances 
than latitude, which we shall call "handicaps," 
might even give the higher latitude the advantage. 
And we are also aware that, as to countries some 
of which have high and others low wages, because 
of one circumstance or another, those of the high 
wages may produce some kinds of goods more cheap- 
ly than those of the low. Now, your Honors, in 
view of what has been said, there seem to us to 
be three general cases in which capital must gravi- 
tate from one country to another, or, even in the 
same country, from one place to another. These 
three cases are where the competing countries are 
in the same latitude; where they are in diffei^nt 
latitudes ; and where there is a tropical area in one 
or both countries. But considering the fact that 
there are "handicaps" which may rob latitudes and 
low pay-rolls of their advantages, before stating 
these three cases, we must provide for exceptions 
to our rule. This we do by this paragraph : 

4. If differences between pay-rolls or latitudes in com- 
peting areas of production be not offset by handicaps, the 
following will be true: 

And we will follow this saving clause with the 
three cases described. And the first one is this : 

A. If such areas are in the same average latitude, capi- 
tal will gravitate towards the lowest pay-rolls. The 
higher pay-rolls will contract, while the lower will expand, 
until pay-rolls and their incident business have become 
equalized throughout the competing areas. 



329 

As we have said before, this migration of capital 
may take place Avithin the boundaries of a single 
country, as well as between two separate countries, 
trading freely with each other. This rule accounts 
for the movement of factories away from cities, 
when city pay-rolls get too high, pay-rolls in distant 
country districts often being so low as to offset 
added freight costs and leave a balance to the credit 
of the country mill. Of course it is true as between 
two nations ; and it has often been illustrated under 
free trade or low tariff-dikes in this country, dur- 
ing some momentary success of the Importing 
Trust. Our capital has moved regularly to Great 
Britain and other countries during low-tariff eras; 
and the only thing which prevented the final level- 
ing of our pay-roll to the plane of the British or 
worse pay-rolls was the downing of the Democratic 
Donkey here and the casting out of the Importing 
Trust from our council halls. Such movements of 
our capital outward through tariff-dike "revision" 
always introduce what we call here "hard times" 
or "recessions in trade." 

The second case is this : 

B. If such comDeHnsT areas lie in appreciably different 
latitudes not in the tropics, capital will gravitate towards 
the lowest latitudes; and pay-rolls and their deioendent 
business will be destroyed everywhere, except in that area 
of lowest average latitude large enough to furnish pro- 
ducts eoual to the weakest consuming power of the com- 
bined areas. 

The working of this rule is shown in our own 
country by the migration of Northern capital into 
the South. Great blocks of capital have gone there 
and been put to work in the iron mills of Bir- 
mingham and other places and in the cotton mills 
throughout the South. We have already described 
the manner in which this movement must continue 



330 . 

and what the result will be unless the tariff-dike 
is "revised^' in favor of still lower latitudes. The 
Cuban Treaty was a sad blow to our Sunny South ; 
and another blow is in sight in free trade between 
us and the Philippine Islands. Our South is a 
glorious country, but it cannot compete with the 
tropics. Free trade between our own North and 
South will cause a change so gradual in the locality 
of capital that it will probably not be violently 
felt in the North. The assimilation will be slow 
and benevolent; whereas "revised" competition be- 
tween our people as a whole and the Philippine 
Islands or Cuba would be marked by the rapid 
destruction of industrial values all over the coun- 
try. 

The third case is this : 

C. If tropical areas are included in the competition, 
capital will gravitate thither and monopolize production, 
to the utmost combined producing capacity of such areas. 
Pay-rolls, business, and the higher civilization will be 
extinguished everywhere in such competing areas, except 
in the tropical parts, and in whatever area of lowest aver- 
age altitude outside may be necessary to make good any 
shortage of the tropical parts in yielding products equal 
to the weakest consuming power of the combined areas. 

This rule has long been well illustrated by the 
movement of our own capital into Porto Kico, Cuba, 
Mexico, Hawaii, South America, and the Philip- 
pine Islands; the reason being that the cost of 
production is so nuich less in these tropical areas 
than in our own country that the tariff "handicap" 
does not sufficiently offset their advantage of lat- 
itude; and therefore our capital "gravitates" south- 
ward. As an instance of this migration, we give 
the following from a New York newspaper: 



"CHIHUAHUA, Mexico, July 21. — The concession 
which was recently granted by the State Government to 



331 

Col. W. C. Green of New York for the estaMishment of 
various kinds of industrial enterprises in this State has 
just been ratified by the Legislature. The concessions call 
for the investment of more than two million dollars in 
gold." 

And at a later date, we read in the editorial 
columns of the same newspaper, under the caption, 
"Secretary Root's Journey to Mexico," the follow- 
ing: 

"Our relations with Mexico are close and cordial. The 
Secretarv's visit will strenarthen the bonds. Development 
across the Rio Grande during recent years has been al- 
most marvellous. This country is deeply interested in 
that development" — 

that is, the Importing Trust is "deeply interested" 
in the profits in the development, your Honors. It 
is a frightful menace to our wage-producer. But 
the article continues: 

**This country is deeply interested in that development 
and has contributed towards it and shared in it in abund- 
ant measure. It is reported on good authority that not 
far from $750,000,000 of American money is employed 
across the border" — 

Yes, your Honors, to take employment from our 
wage-producer and to send delegations to Washing- 
ton to lobby for a reciprocity treaty or a German 
Agreement with Mexico for the free admission of 
their goods to snuff out industry here. 

It needs but half an eye, your Honors, to see 
how badly our domestic business is being under- 
mined by the gravitation of our capital to lower 
cost-levels and the ^dthdrawal from our own funds 
of what might otherwise have come into our own 
pay-rolls. But this is not all, your Honors; for in 
addition to this indirect loss to our business, this 
emigrating capital goes out with no other purpose 
than to make goods at these foreign wage-levels and 



332 

bundle them back over our tariff-dike, and thus 
cause a direct loss to our pay-roll and therefore 
our business, equivalent to the domestic produc- 
tion supplanted by the goods sent in here by our 
expatriated capital in Mexico and otherwheres. By 
this expatriation of our capital, the destruction of 
our prosperity, your Honors, and therefore of our 
civilization, refinement and general virility, is al- 
most by geometrical progression. Instead of wid- 
ening we should close altogether the breach .be- 
tween the quantity of work we are doing now, and 
what we should and would do if we did all our 
people required for their needs. If we closed our 
ports and kept at home the from 2 to 5% of our 
goods which we now export; and ourselves made 
the goods we now import, the gain in our domes- 
tic business would offset many times over our loss 
in foreign trade. 



XXVIII 

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA HAS NO BUSINESS 
WITH TROPICAL COLONIES, OR WITH TROPICAL TER- 
RITORIES TO BE LATER MADE INTO STATES. THE EF- 
FECT OF SUCH A POLICY WOULD BE TO SACRIFICE 
OUR WHOLE WAGE PRODUCING POPULATION TO THE 
AVARICE OF THESE WILY PLAINTIFFS. 

And right here, your Honors', it may be well to 
inquire Avhat business we, a benevolent Republic, 
have with subject possessions. We must not for- 
get that we are neither a Roman Republic nor a 
Roman Em'pire — that is, not yet. We have no 
right, by taxes or tribute of any kind to "milk" our 
subject-provinces. We have no right to exploit 



333 

them as the private graft of our Exporting Trust, 
as England for the benefit of her Exporting Trust, 
exploited us when we were English colonists. As 
far as we can see, however, it is in the interest 
alone of our Exporting Trust, as to exports to, and 
of our Importing Trust, as to imports from those 
islands that we should keep them at all. On the 
one hand all these tropical islands, which are a 
part of us, and Cuba, our adopted daughter, are a 
menace to us; and on the other hand we are a 
menace to them. As long as we hold them or have 
any right to interfere in their affairs, our Export- 
ing Trust will be turning every stone, no matter at 
what cost to home production, — as instance the 
166,000,000 a year we are giving up by the Cuban 
Keciprocity Treaty, — to get the inside track in sell- 
ing goods to these islands, and to postpone the day 
when they will found their own manufactories and 
develop their own natural treasures; and in this 
way we are assisting to exploit them against their 
own best interests which lie in their shutting out 
our goods and in their consequent symmetrical de- 
velopment of industries and the creation of an in- 
dustrial population in those islands which, for all 
their products, will make for them a sure and per- 
petual market. On the other hand, unless we cut 
adrift from our tropical possessions and aggres- 
sions, our Importing Trust will rack its head sick 
contriving hard luck stories as to these "poor little 
struggling peoples," the upshot of which will al- 
ways be the same appeal to Americans to take 
down the tariff bars and give the unhappy little 
(^olored people a "much needed market;" and the 
American people, forgetting that they have no right 
whatever, under the Constitution or under the law 
of God, to be generous before they are just and 



334 

to give these little colored people alms by picking 
the pockets of countless American wage-producers, 
will enter into some fool treaty, like the one with 
Germany, or the one with Cuba, which, by giving 
this wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, a chance 
to sell here in our own domestic market cost-10 
goods from the tropics, in competition with our 
own cost-100 goods, will kill off hope, health, hap- 
piness, and often life among our fellow citizens 
here. And while these wily plaintiffs are getting 
more wealthy from forcing those islands into an 
abnormal development and its later misery for the 
islanders, they are filling our newspapers with their 
lamentations at the "selfishness" of our beet-sugar 
makers, w^ho object to being sacrificed to the trop- 
ical philanthropies of the wily plaintiffs. This is 
all according to the arrangement of their brain- 
cells, your Honors, which merely comes from their 
peculiar environment, a part of which is the pres- 
ence here of a cro^vd of tender-hearted people like 
us who are alwa.ys willing that health-giving boils 
should grow on our neisrhbors' necks and that our 
neisrhbors' pockets should furnish the alms for the 
giving of which we expect to get credit. We are 
a lot of wretched hvpocrites, your Honors; we be- 
lieve in fastins: and praver for our spiritual up- 
buildmsr — if we but be allowed to do the praying, 
bv the absent-treatment route; while the other fel- 
low does the fasting. 

Verv seriously, your Honors, we have no right 
to exploit our colonies. The only decent course to- 
wards them is to cut them out of exporting goods 
to us nnd ourselves out of exporting goods to them ; 
by rnisino: our tariff-dike very high asrainst all the 
world, them included; and raising their tariff-dike 
aiyainst nil the world, ourselves induded. If we 



335 
do less than this, we shall make them the victim of 
our two parasites, the wily plaintiffs, the Import- 
ing Trust and the Exporting Trust. Our tropical 
islands will be the object of continual exploitation 
by these destructive agencies; and we ourselves 
shall suffer from the distortion of our industries 
and the congestion of our wage-producers upon man- 
ufacturing alone. Because of the destruction of our 
agricultural industries from competition with these 
tropical colonies and their endless summer; and, 
because of the superior organization of our manu- 
facturing industries, they will suffer, though only 
for a time, by a like congestion of their wage-pro- 
ducers upon agTicultural industries alone. And 
thus both our wage-producers and theirs, practic- 
ally the entire population in both competing areas, 
would be more or less abjectly enslaved to their 
bodily necessities. But for us the end of it all 
would be, either a dike excluding their goods alto- 
gether, or the total destruction of our entire indus- 
trial system, for a cost-100 country would finally be 
underbidden all along the line by cost-10 colonies, 
gifted as our colonies are with all the natural ma- 
terials for manufacturing of every kind. 

Your Honors, we rejoice in our good Mother Eng- 
land. We have had a couple of set-toos with her 
since we cut her apron-strings; but that was only 
natural. Who would blame her for trying to bring 
back to her heart such a likely kid as we are? But 
^Mother England is afflicted with brain-cells also. 
She does not do as she will but only as she can — 
considering her peculiar brain-cells. And so she 
has given us good examples of the sort of mis- 
takes that we, her children, fortj^-six sov-ereign 
states, ought not to make in this matter of subject 
colonies. She has grovim mellow and sweet and 



quite adorable in Jier advanced age; and^ at this 
day, when we see with what a mild motherliness 
she manages her colonies in Canada and Australia, 
we take olf our hat in sincere veneration. But it 
was not always thus; nor has she corrected her 
mistakes in Ireland and India, the dire results of 
which are still mighty for the unhappiness of the 
people of those countries. Both Ireland and India 
are chronic famine countries since Mother Eng- 
land compelled them to have free trade w4th her; 
snatched from them the opportunities to labor aris- 
ing from their own peoples' wants; and made of 
them the mere spoil of her Importing and Export- 
ing Trusts. The yeast is working in India. The 
causes of India's famines and her general wretch- 
edness are rising to the surface. Her wise men see 
that it is because their country is systematically 
plundered by her Importing and Exporting Trusts, 
that her people are congested upon a narroAV field 
of employment; that her industries are therefore 
not diversified, and that the crops failing upon 
which they must exclusively rely, there is nothing 
left for her people but starvation. These facts are 
welling up from the deeply stirred depths of East 
Indian life, and the remedy must be at last the 
extermination of the counterparts' of these wily 
plaintiffs in India. Here is what Mr. Francis H. 
Skrine says in our North American Review for 
August, 1907 : 

"The jute traffic has poured a flood of wealth into 
Bengal, whose down-trodden masses chafe under Brahmin 
despotism and crave for a larger measure of social recog- 
nition. But the distribution of wealth is as defective as it 
is in Europe. An increasing percentage of the Indian 
population is always on the verge of famine. Railways 
have ectualized the price of food, and maintained it at a 
far higher level than in the days of native rule. Foreign 
commerce is indeed advancing by leaps and bounds; but 
from an Indian point of view, it does not conduce to the 



337 

general well-being. The great bulk of its profits is spent 
in Europe, America, and China. Exports consist mainly 
of raw materials; imports of manufactured goods which 
might readily be proauced by organized labor within the 
Empire. INDIG±5i>iOuS INDUSTRIES HAVE BEBN 
KILLED BY FREE TRADE, AND THOSE WHO HAVE 
PURSUED THEM HAVE BEEN RELEGATED TO AN 
OVERBuRDEJnED SOIL. NINETY PER CENT. OF 
THE POPULATION ARE AGRICULTURISTS, MOST 
OF WHOM ARE PACKED INTO THE ALLUVIAL 
AREAS. Early marriages and large families are incal- 
cated by religion. Thus the preventive checiss enunciated 
by Malthus are at worK on a gigantic scale. Warfare and 
famine are prevented by the British Government, but it is 
powerless against cholera and plague. The pressure of 
population on the soil is feit by all classes with increas- 
ing stringency; and they blame alien ruiers for the con- 
sequences of their disobedience to nature's laws." 

Your Honors, India's ^'indigenous industries have 
been killed by free trade," in very truth; and all 
for the benefit of the Importing and Exporting 
Trusts of that unhappy country. Wherever you 
find a despotism approachable by any sort of a 
bribe, or open to any kind of corruption, there you 
find such as these wily plaintilfs in supreme power. 
For they represent the nomadic and marauding 
merchant princes of the world, with all kinds of 
money to burn for the privilege of plundering the 
common peeople both ways, viz., on the one hand 
through the Exporting Trust, by the congestion of 
indigenous industry upon a few special industries, 
the exploiting of which offers the richest and speed- 
iest returns to the Exporting Trust, and the conse- 
quent enslaving of the people by low wages; and 
on the other hand, through the Importing Trust, by 
depriving native industry of employment because 
of labor-supplanting imports, and thus aiding the 
congestion of labor upon the same employments 
exploited by the Exporting Trust. Is this the point 
towards which we of the United States are drift- 
ing under Cuban Reciprocity Treaties and German 
Agreements, and for the same reason, viz., the in- 



338 

fluence of these powerful and wily plaintiffs at 
court? And will the injury already inflicted by 
the methods named be later supplemented by free 
trade with the Philippines and, through this "hole 
in the wall/' with all the rest of the world? 

And what is true of the Indian colony is true 
of the Irish Colony, just across the channel from 
the place where the people "roll in gold ;" and these 
latter "roll in gold," your Honors, because they 
represent Englaad's Exporting Trust and her Im- 
porting Trust who, with free trade, exploit poor 
Ireland unto her death. In short, it is through the 
avenue of free trade alone by which these incarna- 
tions of rapine in Great Britain uniformly turn 
English colonies to account as they have done ever 
since we, in this country, were colonists; and this 
too is the only way, except through excessive taxa- 
tion for the maintenance of governments in our col- 
onies, represented by barnacles, bloodsuckers and 
spoils-sharing favorites of our Administration at 
Washington, that Porto Eico, Hawaii, or the Phil- 
ippines can ever be of any profit to us; since our 
generous people would never tolerate the collection 
of open tribute to our Government, after the man- 
ner of the Empires of old towards their subject 
provinces ; and after the manner of Mother England 
even at this day in Egypt. For we read in a late 
New York newspaper: 



"There are several points of resemblance and of differ- 
ence in the situations presented respectively in Egjrpt and 
In Corea. The suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire over 
the Nile land is not disputed by any European Power and 
is formally recognized by Great Britain in the pajmient 
of an annual tribute. ' ' 



What is this annual tribute, your Honors? Sim- 
ply blackmail. It was formerly paid by Egypt to 



339 

Turkey to buy Turkey s abstiueuec from the violent 
taking of Egyptian property; and by tlie force of 
circumstances England is compelled to be a party 
to this brigandage by paying the ^^tribute" from 
Egyptian taxes, or getting a recoupment through 
the Egyptian Exporting Trust, which sent us 
120,000,000 of raw cotton last year, and probably 
made us pay that tribute to Turkey; while the Im- 
porting Trust, one of the wily plaintiffs herein, 
still succeeds through its Washington lobby in pre- 
venting the tariff-dike from sheltering our South- 
ern cotton-growers. So in this round-about way we 
enlightened Americans' pay tribute to Turkey ; that 
is, blood-money, a payment for not murdering 
in Egypt. 

As we have said, poor Ireland also is unhappily 
an appendage of a Government where free trade 
has free course and her industries like those of In- 
dia "have been killed by free trade, and those who 
have pursued them have been relegated to an over- 
burdened soil." Here is an article from the New 
York Times of September 20, 1907, under the title 
"Is Ireland Asleep?" which illustrates Irish con- 
ditions : 



"Mr. Michael McKenna, an Alderman of Chicago, has 
returned from a tour of Ireland strong in the conviction 
that something ought to be done for the mother country. 
There is plenty of Irisn American capital in this country, 
Mr. McKenna thinks, 'begging for channels of invest- 
ment,' and he suggests the manufacture of Irish lace, the 
development of Irish market gardens and fancy dairies as 
excellent channels for it to seek. The Alderman saw 
acres and acres of Irish land lying waste for the lack of 
that kind of energy and push Irishmen lend to the affairs 
of Chicago. He also noted that the persistent report of 
the pig dwelling under the same roof as the family is ut- 
terly false. He traveled all over Ireland and never once 
saw the pig in the parlor. So the too familiar Irish pig is 
proved a myth like William Tell and the Chinese play 
that requires a year or so in the acting. Ireland, the Al- 
derman declares, is asleep. While the British Parliament 



340 

is in session the world frequently notes that the sleep of 
Ireland is restless. But the Alderman is right. What 
Ireland needs more than all else is some of the energy 
her sons exert in other lands. Undoubtedly some of the 
capital Irishmen so easily accumulate elsewhere could be 
put to good and profitable use in the mother country." 

The sleep of Ireland, your Honors', is the sleep 
that follows total exhaustion, after a long wrestle 
with the angel of death from whom escape has final- 
ly been made ^^so as by fire.^' During the dreadful 
famines that visited her in the first century after 
she w^as forced to abandon her leading industries 
in favor of the English Exporting Trust, free trade 
with England starved Irishmen by thousands and 
thousands. Her population fled from her shores 
as from a burning ship and the number of Irish- 
men living on the Emerald Isle was reduced from 
8,000,000 to 5,000,000; and the hope of life went 
out from hundreds of thousands of those kept at 
home by lack of the price of a steerage berth. Thus 
Ireland, the home of one of the most gifted and 
generous of peoples, and of the most unflagging in- 
dustry; the home of the keenest mother wit of 
which the world has knowledge, of fervent patriot- 
ism, deep learning, and loyal affection for hill and 
dale, lake and heath, was swept by the angel of 
death, scarred and broken by famine and disease, 
and abandoned by millions of her sad-hearted sons 
who were compelled to choose between home-love 
and starvation; all because of congesting upon her 
soil the greater part of her population, through the 
destruction of her magnificent industries at the 
hands of the British Parliament, which w^as almost 
synonymous with the British Exporting Trust. 
Conditions remain the same now as decades' ago. 
^The Alderman saw acres and acres of Irish land 
lying waste for the lack of that kind of energy and 
push Irishmen lend to affairs," when free trade 



341 

does not enslave them and put the fruits of their 
toil in the till of some Importing or Exporting 
Trust. "Undoubtedly some of the capital Irishmen 
so easily accumulate" where they are given a fair 
share of the results of their industry "could be put 
to good and profitable use in the mother country ;" 
but no sensible Irishman from this country will 
put a penny in an Irish industry as long as the 
British Exi3orting Trust, through free trade with 
Ireland, stands Avith open maw to swallow his prof- 
its and his business. Ireland, like India, is a poor 
helpless and cruelly exploited colony of Great Bri- 
tain. Do we want such colonies, 3^our Honors? No 
your Honors, wherever they may be, we do not 
want such colonies. So long as we hold them, they 
will furnish only just so many more sleight-of-hand 
tricks whereby these plaintiffs, by sacrificing |10 
of solid domestic business for each |1 of exports 
to or imports from their trading regions, can turn 
our national w^ealth into their own pockets. We 
do not want to starve our colonies or have them 
starve us ; but any trade betw^een us in either direc- 
tion is to the injury of wage-producers there or 
here. Considering the height w^e occupy in the mat- 
ter of wages, we particularly shall be injured at 
every step. We cannot afford to have our indus- 
tries made fewer under any circumstances. To 
diversify industries into the greatest possible va- 
riety, is to elevate your wage-producer and give 
him the best chance for advancement in the world. 
The greatest diversity in production gives the great- 
est diversity in exchanges, which helps each wage- 
producer to the greatest variety of other products 
in exchange for his own. His product, wages, is 
divided into as many different parts as there are 
parts to his needs; and he offers these parts to 



342 

people who need what he otters and offer what he 
needs. That this is done through money as a go- 
between does not alter the facts. His working for 
wages and offering money for each thing he wants 
is a good deal more convenient but it amounts to 
the same thing as if, being a shoemaker, he went 
to the hatter and made him a pair of shoes in ex- 
change for a hat; then to the clothier to do the 
same thing for clothes ; then to the grocer, to do the 
same thing for groceries, and so on. The purpose 
of our work is to exchange it for the work of others 
in this way. Now, unless we who, considering our 
climate and soil, are people to whom life is about 
equally expensive, exchange between ourselves ex- 
clusively, there will be no necessary correspondence 
between the energy and fibre which we put into the 
work we do and the energy and fibre represented 
in the wages which we receive back in exchange. 
That is, if we had worked a week and had laid out 
energy w^hich could only be restored to us by re- 
ceiving a certain price for our work, covering, say, 
a week's food, clothing, shelter, and recreation, but 
by a leak in the dike were compelled to take a price 
for our work which would only pay for food, cloth- 
ing, shelter, and recreation for three and a half 
days, we would have to go without food, clothing, 
and shelter for three and a half days in every week. 
Now this shows what happens when people living 
in one set of conditions are compelled by free trade 
or a "revised'' tariff-dike to compete with people 
living under a different set of conditions. A given 
amount of labor in one country will buy either 
more or less than in another. The cause of this 
may be that one country lies iu a region of longer 
summers and richer soils than the other, where in 
order to live comfortably people need to get less 



343 

wages out of their employment. Or perhaps the 
workers in one country live in poorer circumstan- 
ces than those of another country, so that, while 
making just as much product in a day, in order to 
get back the human fibre they have put in it, they 
need to be paid less for their product. And so, if, 
instead of being compelled by a tariff-dike, to buy 
his week's supplies of the people who might have 
just paid him for his week's work, a wage-producer 
should buy that week's supplies of the Importing 
Trust, at the price which would only return to the 
foreigner abroad the cost of his cheaper week's liv- 
ing, he might find that he had in his own pocket 
the difference between the cost of a week's living 
at home and a week's living in a cheaper country; 
but, in the first place, he would have stopped the 
ready sale, at the home price, of a week's w^ork 
done by some one of his countrymen to whom he 
had been the anticipated medium of exchanging one 
week's cost of domestic living for another. And, in 
the second place, he would have compelled that 
same fellow worker either to go without food, cloth- 
ing, shelter, and recreation altoQ:ether, or to take 
for his week's work a price which would pav for 
less than a week's suT>T3ly of these necessary things. 
That is, he would find, in the end. that the s:ain in 
his pocket, that is, the balance left there after buy- 
ing his week's sudpIv of the Importing Trust, would 
exactlv correspond to the shortage in the pocket of 
his fellow worker, diminished bv the commission 
appropriated bv the Importing Trust upon the 
«oods which had passed throusrh its warehouse here. 
That is, aijain, this wasre-producer who had bou2rht 
his week's supplies of the Importing Trust, would 
have sacrificed a fellow workman, in order to di- 
vide with the Importing Trust the difference be- 



344 

tween his fellow workman's weekly pa}- and the 
weekly pay of some workman in a cheaper country. 
But the American wage-producer who votes for an 
Importing-Trust Administration here, such as the 
Roosevelt- Sternburg combination, soon gets the 
profit of such transactions taken away from him by 
similar Importing-Trust bargains made by his fel- 
low^ wage-producers; and the result is a general 
lowering of the plane of American living to that of 
the countries from which the Importing Trust gets 
its goods. 

We cannot repeat too often that the sole business 
of these wily plaintiffs is to search everywhere to 
find places where either the climate and soil or the 
low social condition enables people to sell their 
day's labor for less than the pay received by some 
worker in another country ; and then to buy the 
cheap day's labor and go to that other country and 
undersell with it the worker who must get more for 
his labor in order to live; and so compel the latter 
to go without food at all or accept a price for his 
labor which will not return to him his outlay in 
blood and muscle ; in other words, accept starvation 
wages. Your Honors, it is because of this piratical 
and vicious character of the business of these wily 
plaintiffs that w^e have appealed their case to this 
High Court. The heinous wrong which the Import- 
ing Trust does to the workers of this country is 
done by the Exporting Trust to the workers of 
other countries. They are both the worst possible 
enemies of civilization and morality that exist upon 
this round globe. Wherever they go and whatever 
they do in the line of their business is to the de- 
gradation and destruction of wage-producers. They 
are low and sordid in spirit; for they care not 
whence they draw their profits or on what innocent 



345 

babes they feed. For their fiendish operations are 
carried on against the very babe in arms ; they are 
the destroyers of happy family life. Base, ignoble, 
sordid birds of prey, their members as remorse- 
lessly consume the very flesh of their fellow men 
as the eagles the lambs of the hillside flock. They 
make no profit in anything that does not reek of 
death. Ay, your Honors, every penny they put in 
their pants is the coined blood of some honest toiler 
somewhere on this globe ! 

Oh, your Honors, for but a glimpse at the brain- 
cells of these wily plaintiffs! We know that we 
should find them the same size, mass, shape, and 
relative position as those which figure in the brains 
of highway robbers, burglars, pickpockets, and 
sneak thieves. For they all pursue their respective 
callings, heedless and regardless of the dreadful 
want they bring on innocent wage-producers. They 
are all of a kidney, your Honors, however much 
they may differ in the churches they attend and the 
clothes they wear. They are the national leeches 
and bloodsucking parasites against which we have 
always contended. They are gamblers and adven- 
turers, knights of fortune. It is they who make all 
the uncertainties of life; they make it a naked 
gamble from day to day; for, because one of these 
wily plaintiffs may have discovered some wage-pro- 
ducer more wretched than he and therefore ready 
to work for less bread by the day, nobody can tell 
at what hour one of them may appear to snatch 
from the honest worker his job and make him sit 
in hunger and tears Avith his starving children dis- 
tracting his heart with cries for bread. We can- 
not look kindly upon these wily plaintiffs, your 
Honors, even though they did not arrange their 
brain-cells, or choose the unhappy environment 



346 

which has forced them to such close kinship with 
the hyenas, the foxes, the wolves, and all the rude 
and blood-thirstv children of savagedom. 



XXIX 

THE LAW OF ECONOMIC GRAVITATION WHICH WE HAVE 
HERETOFORE OUTLINED IS THE BUSINESS LAW AC- 
CORDING TO WHICH ALL CAPITAL IS NOW MOVING, 
AND A RECOGNITION OF THE PRINCIPLES IT IN- 
VOLVES MUST LIE AT THE FOUNDATION OF HAPPI- 
NESS OF EVERY NATION. 

Your Honors, we have already outlined to you 
what Ave think are the principles according to which 
all capitalnow moves, locates and participates in 
production, to the employment of the property-pro- 
ducer, the wage-producer, and the adjunct-produc- 
er, who comprise all the active population of every 
civilized country. So far as the observed facts 
which it states are concerned there is nothing new 
in this law of economic gravitation. We take no 
credit except for having put it in this orderly form 
and shown the relation which so plainly exists be- 
tAveen capital, climate, and pay-roll. Since we built 
it up Avith such interpolated explanatory comment 
as to separate the parts rather inconveniently, for 
convenience of reference aa^c Avill state the law here 
as a whole and in clo^'^e sequence. It is as follows: 

BENEDICT'S LAW OF ECONOMIC GRAVITATION 

1. Capital desiring- a given market for its output must 
finally locate in the area of lowest cost of production for 
that market. 

2. Cost of subsistence is cost of production and is rep- 
resented by pay-rolls, which are the measure of what is 
called ''business," 



Sir 

3. Outside of the tropics, naked cost of subsistence 
varies directly with latitude; while within the tropics it 
is uniform and lowest. 

4. If, in competing areas of production, differences be- 
tween pay-rolls or latitudes be not offset by handicaps, 
the following will be true: 

A. If such areas are in the same average latitude, 
capital will gravitate towards the lowest pay-rolls. The 
highest pay-rolls will contract, while the lower will ex- 
pand, until pay-rolls and their incident business have 
become equalized throughout the competing areas. 

B. If such competing areas lie in appreciably differ- 
ent latitudes not in the tropics, capital will gravitate 
towards the lowest latitudes; and pay-rolls and their 
dependent business will be destroyed everywhere, ex- 
cept in that area of lowest average latitude large 
enough to furnish products equal to the weakest con- 
suming power of the combined areas. 

C. If tropical areas are included in the competition, 
capital will gravitate thither and monopolize produc- 
tion to the utmost combined producing capacity of such 
areas. Pay-rolls, business, and the higher civilization 
will be extingished everywhere in such competing areas, 
except in the tropical parts, and in whatever area of 
lowest average latitude outside may be necessary to 
make good any shortage of the tropical parts in yielding 
products equal to the weakest consuming power of the 
combined areas. 

Your Honors, we have already called attention to 
the fact that even for a given amount of work, pay- 
rolls may vary from country to country. Of course, 
whether a lower pay-roll will sustain the wage-pro- 
ducer without loss of fibre, depends upon how much 
of the necessaries of life his wages in his country 
will buy. We might call that pay-roll a full pay- 
roll which returned to the wage-producer his fibre 
and a savings fund. We also might call a pay-roll 
^nalced w^hen it returns the wage-producer's fibre but 
nothing more. And we might call it degenerate, 
when the pay-roll returns less than the wage-pro- 
ducer's fibre. Our own pay-roll is probably the 
only full pay-roll in the best sense, in the world. 
Rome European pay-rolls are barely nalcecl ; while 



348 

others are flatly dege?ierate. England's pay-roll, in 
the average is flatly degenerate^ because she now 
does and long has allowed her Importing and Ex- 
porting Trusts to coin the bodies of her wage-pro- 
ducers into profits for these evil geniuses of Eng- 
land. It is not too much to say that England's 
entire industrial population has been approaching 
identity with her pauper class for over a generation. 
To save themselves from such a fate, English wage- 
producers are emigrating to other lands by the 
hundred thousand; and those w^ho remain at home, 
congested on fewer and fewer industries, are en- 
gaged in a constant trade-union war with their em- 
ployers against reductions in wages. At the mo- 
ment there is a better tone in English industry ow- 
ing entirely to the great leak in our Dingley Dike 
which allows hundreds of millions of English com- 
peting goods to invade our market here every year. 
Your Honors, we believe the law just detailed in 
your hearing is that according to which capital 
must always move. If it does not move, it must be 
because of some "handicap" offsetting either a 
lower pay-roll or a lower latitude. We are aware 
that these wily plaintiffs, and especially the Im- 
porting Trust, will utter their loudest "pooh-pooh" 
at the notion that the tropics can ever have any 
drawing power for capital. But, your Honors, we 
believe that, as strong as the law of physical gravi- 
tation upon matter, will henceforth be the pull of 
the tropics upon capital. Glacier-like in its move- 
ment, it will be as irresistible, except for the con- 
struction of "handicaps" in the form of strong tar- 
iff-dikes to stop utterly the influx of tropical goods ; 
and the temperate-zone nation which lowers or "re- 
vises" downward its present dike, or scorns to build 
higher that already built, will begin to be forced 



349 

down by the glacier from the very hour of its scorn. 
If, in our case, by "revision" or by neglect to build 
our dike higher, we should expose ourselves, a cost- 
100 country, to the competition of the cost-10 trop- 
ics, the movement of our capital outward would be 
glacial in its resistless power but avalanchial in 
its speed. Standing high, we would fall far and 
swiftly. In our hemisphere we point to Mexico and 
Brazil, both largely tropical, as certain, unless we 
"handicap'' them with prohibitory dikes, to exterm- 
inate our industries in the next half century. And 
what shall we say of Cuba, at our door, entirely 
tropical, the island which our wily plaintiffs long 
to annex to us intact, with a capacity for all forms 
of production and at such costs as to paralyze the 
industries of our entire Atlantic States ! Why, 
your Honors, look at that part of the earth which 
is all in lower latitudes than our United States! 
Two-thirds of South America; all of Central xlmer- 
ica and the West Indies; about all of Mexico ; about 
all of Africa; three-quarters of Australia ; all of the 
Malaysian Archipelago; and a large slice of Con- 
tinental Asia! Your Honors, as 3% is to 20 so is 
the area of our United States to that of the tropical 
and sub-tropical Avorld combined. We have asked 
you the qu-estion before, but we ask it now again : 
Under "revision'' or even under a failure to build 
our dike far higher, what show would our one- 
seventeenth of the earth's area, population, capi- 
tal, and raw materials have against the remaining 
sixteen-seventeenth s and their bare bargain-coun- 
ter, auction-sale surpluses? What show would a 
3l^ area in the "bleak north" have against a 20 
area, all in the Avorld's Sunny South ! Can we SAvim 
up Niagara Falls, your Honors? Can we walk up 
Washington Monument at right-angles, like a fly. 



350 

but without suckers on our bare feet? For the hap- 
piness of these wily plaintiffs, are we to try and 
stem the tropical tide? Do "the laws of commerce" 
make it necessary for us to prostrate ourselves be- 
fore the Juggernaut of cheap production? Oh, we 
know that the wily plaintiffs say, and especially 
our pet enemy, the Importing Trust, that the little 
yelloAV men, the brown men, the black men, and all 
the rest, are no good against white men. We whites 
have a demnition corner on excellence. The rest 
were made to wait on us, bring us our smoking 
jacket, our slippers and our pipe, and stir up the 
lire in the grate. But what is this', we see! Here 
is Avhat the New York Sun said on September 24, 
1907, under the caption, "Is China Producing Her 
Own Steel?" 

"According to a letter from Shanghai published on 
September 22 by the Philadelphia PUBLIC LEDGER, the 
Chinese will soon be able to supply all the materials 
needed for the extensive railway systems which have been 
planned for their country and before the end of 1908 will 
compete with Western nations in the market for steel 
products afforded by Japan, the Philippines and other 
parts of the Far East. 

"The development of the iron and steel industry in the 
interior of China has taken place so suddenly and so 
silently that it seems to have attracted very little atten- 
tion in Europe, though in July of this year the United 
States Steel Corporation ordered a trial shipment of some 
2,500 tons of pig iron from the Chinese works." 

We wonder, your Honors, if the tariff-dike for 
iron ought to be "revised." Our tariff on pig iron 
is |4 a ton, but that does not phaze China, where 
wages are but a few cents a day. Then, besides, 
we thought we had "unexampled supplies of raw 
materials'' and that we were "without a peer in 
our natural resources." It looks as if nature was 
doing something for China also. But we continue: 



351 

"The Chineiie iron and steel factories are situated at 
Han-Yang on the Yangste River about seven hundred 
miles from its junction with the Shanghai River" — 



Which, your Honors, is a region close to the 30th 
parallel of latitude, about the same as Galveston, 
Texas. 



"Owing to the abundance of ore and coal procurable 
at no great distance and to the UNLIMITED SUPPLY 
OF CHEAP LABOR, iron and steel products can be 
turned out there in less time and at lower prices than 
must be paid for imported articles. The ore is brought 
from the mines in steel barges carrying from 500 to 800 
tons apiece, and delivered at a wharf in Han-Yang, 
whence it is conveyed in steel cars to the works. 

"It appears that many bessemer and many open hearth 
Siemens furnaces, together with twenty sets of rolling 
mills for rails, are already in running order. The plant 
is being increased continually. According to statements 
made by foreign engineers employed on the Hankow- 
Pekin Railroad, the rails provided for this line by the 
Han-Yang Company are actually better than could have 
been procured in Europe. By the utilization of the 
Siemens furnaces an entire elimination of the phosphorus 
in the ore has been attained. Flat and round steel, bent 
over again and doubled under a steam hammer, show no 
sign of traction. All tests for torsion, elongation and 
ductility prove the Han- Yang product to be of the highest 
quality. 

"We are told that during 1908, when the projected 
mills will be in full swing, their aggregate output of rails 
will be from 5,000 to 8,000 tons a month. Most of these 
rails will be used in China itself, as by a decree of the 
Pekin Government all Chinese railways must buy their 
materials, so far as this may be possible, from the Han- 
Yang establishment, which is looked upon as a national 
concern. As yet many of the things indispensable for 
railway construction and operation are not obtainable in 
China, but an immense plant for supplying passenger and 
freight cars, bridge steel and structural steel, is to be 
erected at Han-Yang in 1908. 

"Many years ago the well known explorer Baron von 
Richtofen announced after a prolonged investigation of 
the mineral resources of the interior of the Middle King- 
dom that he had found there larger deposits of true coal 
and high grade iron ore than were known to exist any- 
where else upon the surface of the globe" — 

And, your Honors, the Importing Trust is all 
the while telling us we are the "peerless ones,'^ 



352 

when it comes to raw material^'-— we have got ^em 
all beat ! But back to our reading : 

He expressed the conviction that China would one day- 
become the chief purveyor of those articles to the rest 
of the world." 

Why, your Honors, w'e thought we were elected 
to pur-vey everything to everj^body, always, and al- 
ways! 

"Nothing but the lack of adequate means of transpor- 
tation has deferred an energetic exploitation of China's 
iron and coal mines." 

Ah, the Importing Trust is smoked out at last. 
It thought we never would find out about those 
Chinese iron and steel mills; that Ave would ^^re- 
vise" the dike and let in steel and such things free; 
and it then could tote in Chinese steel at a great 
big profit. It is bringing in Chinese pig iron now, 
right over the top of the dike. Let us drown our 
ow^n steel ^^trust," your Honors, by taking down 
our dike, put 100,000 steel people out of their jobs 
here, and turn our whole steel business over to the 
Importing Trust. We move the Court to that 
effect. More of the reading, however: 

"Now that the work has been fairly started, there is 
reason to believe that early in the twentieth century 
Chinese coal, as being far superior in quality, wiU drive 
the Japanese combustible out of the Far Eastern market, 
and that much if not most of the steel products used on 
the Pacific coast of Asia will be manufactured in the 
Middle Kingdom. ' ' 

And the writer might have said, your Honors, 
''much if not most of the steel products* used in 
the United States of America will be manufactured 
in the Middle Kingdom,'' unless the American tar- 
iff -dike is doubled in height. 



* 353 

Stil more of this confession against the Import- 
ing Trust: 

"A dozen years ago it seemed probable that the un- 
sealing of China by means of railways would be per- 
formed by foreigners and that its incalculable mineral 
wealth would fall into their hands. Of late, however, a 
striking change has taken place in the industrial policy 
of the Pekin Government. Not only has the Empress 
Regent decided that the construction and management of 
railways must be undertaken by natives, but also that the 
materials needed for those purposes must be produced at 
home. The revolutionizing spirit is likely soon to spread 
from industrial to political affairs, if it is true that the 
Council of State, which was reorganized the other day, 
has been directed to examine the feasibility of giving 
China a constitution at an early date." 

How can these intolerable things be, your 
Honors? Here is the yellow man in a hot country 
daring to kick over the traces and make things 
out of steel, in addition to making things already 
out of cotton and other things, when neither 
the yellow man nor a hot country was to do such 
things. We thought the Chinaman might push us' 
pretty close with textiles of the coarser kinds; but 
never as to metals. But here is the little yellow 
scoundrel in a sub-tropical spot jumping with both 
feet on our iron and steel flower beds. He never 
was "ordained" to do such things. It is against his 
native genius. He was to raise rice and cane and 
do up our collars. He was to let all these higher 
things alone for us to do. Because he never, never, 
no never would be able to do them without mak- 
ing a mess of it. He was to do the things he could 
do the cheapest and exchange them with us for 
things we could do the cheapest — that was the com- 
mand of the Importing Trust here. We now see 
a very good reason why our war fleet should go 
around the "Horn" to the Pacific. Water is run- 
ning up hill in China! And who'd a thunk it! 



354 

What in the world is to become of us white trash ! 
And our long-cherished assurance that we were 
the whole show! We weep large, round tears, 
your Honors, at the thought of our disgrace. The 
Chinese would not stay put. The ''^Orient'' and 
its great ^ 'trade'' are no more. Oh, trade, where is 
thy Orient! Oh, Orient, where is thy trade! Go- 
ing, going, going, gone! And like a decent tub 
we ought to try and stand on our own bottom, 
your Honors. Why not stop dreaming about suck- 
ing the blood of the '^commerce of the world?" 
W^hy not sit down and earn our own living instead 
of hoping to '^exchange'' it out of the heathen? 

Your Honors, we have an idea that, before ly- 
ing down quietly and admitting that 'the law of 
economic gravitation which we have contrived has 
any thing in it, by their goods and chattels among 
the newspapers and college professors active and 
emeriti, these wily plaintiffs will try to show that 
it has so many exceptions that it will not draw at 
any point worth mentioning. When we say, ^^If 
differences between pay-rolls or latitudes' be not 
oft'set by handicaps/^ certain things will follow, 
we are aware that the word "handicap" can cover 
a great many conditions adverse to the truth of 
the law in some particular, cooked-up case. But 
what we stand for is this* broad fact that, taking 
any two considerable areas of the earth, compet- 
ing against each other under absolute freedom of 
trade, capital in operation within them will surely 
move in exact accordance with the law^; perhaps 
slowly at first, but as surely as the continued ebb- 
ing and flowing of the tides, the final speed of 
the gravitation of capital to be determined by the 
size of their differences in the determining condi- 
tions and varying directly with that size. We 



355 

would especially caution you, your Honors, not to 
be taken unawares by any criticism of this law 
which the wily plaintiffs, or either of them, may 
her'cafter make. We do not doubt that they Avill 
cite a very long and formidable list of exceptions 
in cases which ought to demonstrate the truth of 
our proposition. But you will soon observe that 
any of the conditions which they will claim would 
take a case out from the list of those proving the 
law, are merely transient conditions, some of them 
entirely within the control of man, and others, 
though not in his control, likely to become modi- 
fied with time and no longer prevent the migra- 
tion of capital. 

In order more fully to anticipate all the un- 
fair arguments of the wily plaintiffs' counsel, let 
us ourselves' examine into this word "handicap" 
and the sense in which it is used in this connec- 
tion. 

'^Handicap,-' as we have used the word, means 
any circumstance offsetting a profit otherwise pos- 
sible in trade; and this circumstance may exist 
in either of two countries or localities which 
otherwise would buy and sell together. And it 
would still be a "handicap,'- whatever its size as 
compared with the profit; that is, whether larger, 
equal to, or less than the profit. But in using 
the word "offset" in the law, we mean such an 
"offsetting" as would prevent the capital from 
moving to a different area of production. Further- 
more it is plain that a "handicap" is* an "advan- 
tage," or an "advantage" a "handicap," according 
to your point of view; as, for instance, a tariff 
which acts as a handicap against the Importing 
Trust, acts' on the other hand as an advantage to 
the domestic industry threatened by the Import- 



:356 

ing Trust with competition. Again, a "handicap" 
may be a natural one, or one presented by nature; 
or it may be artificial, or one made by man to 
offset a natural advantage held by another. Of 
course, handicaps made by nature in the line of 
large land-masses, ocean and air-currents, latitude, 
longitude, altitude, soils, water supplies, mines, 
forests, and the like, are things for which we have 
to trust nature, and, as far as relates to their orig- 
inal quantity or quality at the moment of dis- 
covery, are not alterable by human means; 
though of course water-courses might be changed, 
wells and irrigation plants constructed, forests cut 
away and soils exhausted or enriched. On the 
other hand, handicaps arising from labor condi- 
tions, volume of capital, machinery, methods, sani- 
tation, transportation, and the like, as well as tar- 
iffs and other regulations, are alterable handicaps 
or advantages, which may be changed at will 
Keeping in mind these various kinds of handicaps, 
we may construct a table covering as many as we 
can think of and group them according to their 
inherent qualities. For instance, we can make two 
general gToups for the alterable and unalterable 
handicaps; and we may subdivide these groups, 
separating the alterables into governmental handi- 
caps, or those made by the government; and local 
ones, or those arising from local circumstances; 
and the tmalterahles into limited handicaps, or 
those which are fixed as to locality; and universal 
handicaps, or those which may be found anywhere. 
According to this arrangement, our table reads 
thus : 



ALTEEABLE. 



357 

HANDICAPS. 

Governmental. 



Local. 



in which are in- 
cluded all govern- 
mental regulations 
or devices to hin- 
der imports or ex- 
ports, whether tar- 
iffs or other arbi- 
trary regulations 
and limitations; 
and all regulations 
which actually 
hinder trade with- 
out being made 
for that purpose. 

such as inhere in 
wage-scales; capi- 
tal ; labor and 
health conditions; 
machinery; organ- 
ization; methods ; 
freights; transpor- 
tation, and the 
like. 



UNALTERABLE. 



Limited 



Universal. 



such as inhere in 
latitude ; 1 o n g i- 
tude; ocean cur- 
rents ; air cur- 
rents; land-masses; 
altitude, and the 
like. 

such as soils; wa- 
ter - supplies; 
mines; forests, and 
the like. 



Your Honors, this table will be of use in testing 
the strength of the arguments of counsel for the 
wily plaintiffs against our theory that the final 
position of a nation is irrevocably fixed in the 
cost of its production ; and that it is scientifically 
possible to determine the index-number for each 
nation and by a comparison of numbers determine 
to a certainty, if free trade prevails between them, 



358 

^\liich of any two nalions is destined to indus- 
trial annihilation. Our friends, the enemy, deal 
constantly in glittering generalities; Ave might say, 
your Honors, in "dazzling generalities," which put 
the intellectual sight of the unwary out of com- 
mision and make them an easy prey to these wily 
plaintiffs in their stage fury against our "trusts," 
otherwise our client, American Production. And 
it is the purpose of this little table to rip off some 
of the isinglass and other tinsel from the glitter- 
ing phrases of counsel for the wily plaintiffs and, 
if that be possible, get some sort of a rational line 
on them. For example, if you will remember, 
your Honors, somewhere in the argument of coun- 
sel for the Importing Trust, the wily plaintiff here- 
in, as near as appears from our hasty notes, he 
said something like this: 

"Our superiority over any other people in the world 
in manufacturing has been attained during the last thirty 
years through the following factors: 

"First: — The energy and enterprise of our people. 

"Second: — Our inventive talent and the marvelous 
increase in labor-saving machinery. 

"Third: — The bountiful supply of food and raiment 
for the support of workmen, and the unlimited stores 
of iron, copper, lead, and other minerals as the raw 
material of manufacturing, 

"Fourth: — Low tax rate, as compared with our chief 
competitors in manufacturing, thereby lessening the 
burdens of industry." 

Before analyzing this list of wonders whereby 
we are the natural "workshop of the world," we 
pause to remark that it was in part this very list 
of wonders, prepared by England's Exporting 
Trust, which during much of the nineteenth cen- 



359 

tury, was put forward as the reason why England 
was destined to be to the end of time "the work- 
shop of the world ;'' and we wonder why this great 
liouor has now been transferred to ns. England 
had passed through centuries of protection and, 
expressly because of protection, had become the 
Avealthi-est and most powerful nation in the world. 
We have likewise passed through a long period of 
at least partial protection and in our turn have 
become the wealthiest and most powerful nation 
in the world. But England had congested her 
working iwople upon manufacturing industries 
and had neglected to balance her food-production 
with lier textile and metal-production; and because 
of h-er weak home market and the vibrations of 
the "States" between free trade and protection, 
Avhicli alternately opened and shut her greatest 
foreign market, England's manufacturing em- 
ployees were at times in straights from what is 
called "overproduction" but which was, in fact, 
underconsumption. Therefore, taking advantage 
of a period when English factory hands were in 
distress because of our shutting English goods 
from this market by our tariff of 1842, and also 
of the famine in Ireland, which served as a bogus 
object lesson for the orators of the English Ex- 
porting Trust, said Exporting Trust, under the 
pretense of securing a "cheap loaf," prevailed up- 
on the English people to sweep away their Corn 
Laws, or laws protecting English agriculture; and 
because of their great accumulation of capital, 
machinerv% and skilled labor, through something 
like six hundred years of progressive protection, 
believing themselves destined to be "the workshop 
of the world" the English manufacturers, that is, 
the said English Exporting Trust, looking only to 



360 

its enrichment, and recking not of the degrada- 
tion of its employes, also conceded the abolition 
of import tariffs upon manufactures. Then this 
same English Exporting Trust busied itself to per- 
suade the nations that England was destined by 
nature to be "the workshop of the world ;'^ that the 
interests of the rest of the world required all other 
nations also to take down all tariff walls against 
English manufactures, which they thus could se- 
cure at lower costs than by their production at 
home; in the same manner that England had cut 
down all tariffs on "raw materials," which she' 
could import more economically than she could 
produce them. Then it was, in England's hey-day 
of trade, before other nations had developed their 
own manufacturing resources, that our Importing 
Trust, taking its cue from its English end, the Eng- 
lish Exporting Trust, began to teach our people 
that England was the natural "workshop of the 
world," because she enjoyed above all other nations 
the advantages numbers 1 and 2 in the list just 
cited from counsel for these wily plaintiffs. Has* 
free trade been good for England, your Honors? 
If it has, how is it that in less than a century we, 
who in our ignorance have stood fast for at least 
a small measure of protection for manufactures, 
have beaten England from her position as "work- 
shop of the world" and are now listening to the 
claim that we are "the workshop of the world," 
for the same reason that England was the same 
thing but a short time ago? And if we follow 
English example into tariff "revision," w^hat earn- 
est have we that we shall not share her fate and 
drop, as she is dropping, towards the tail of the 
world-procession in production and civilization? 
We have not yet emerged from the protection 



361 

period which made her great. Should we be eager 
also to enter upon the "revision" or Free Trade 
period^ which is' making her so small? 

We said a moment ago, but ironically, "We won- 
der why this great honor (that of being ^the 
workshop of the world') has now been transferred 
to us." We think we know. These wily plain- 
tiffs are but the foreign ends of England's Export- 
ing and Importing Trust respectively. That is, 
our Importing Trust is the foreign end of Eng- 
land's Exporting Trust while our Exporting Trust 
is but the foreign end of England's Importing 
Trust. These "trusts" have no heart, no soul, no 
nervous system, and no patriotism. They are gla- 
cial in their emotions. They are the only destruc- 
tive "trusts" in any country; and they go indiff- 
erently from country to country in search of the 
richest spoil. As long as England offered the best 
returns, they patted her on the back and called 
her "the workshop of the world;" and adjusted 
her by their cryptic influences to that condition 
best fitted for her uttermost spoliation. Now that 
they have about finished England; now that the 
Bishop of London can say "They have asked me 
how I reconciled the belief in the Good God lov- 
ing all his children with the wretched million in 
East London who seem abandoned by both God 
and man;" now that such fearful conditions exist 
in England; noAV that England, by her free trade 
practices, abandons a million people in one city to 
starvation, giving to a million workers in other 
lands the work, the wages for which should feed, 
warm and clothe this sad and hopeless million in 
London; now that the English orange seems to 
be sucked dry, these international wily plaintiffs. 



362 

whose sole business is the spoliation of wage-pro- 
ducers the world around, have passed to the Ameri- 
can orange, Avhich, by dint of the same flattery, the 
same thrusting forward as ^'the workshop of the 
w^orld,'^ the same specious announcement of eter- 
nal superiority, they hope to suck as dry as they 
have sucked the English citrus. And after that, 
what? Next! We think we see who is next, your 
Honors. We are already being introduced to the 
n-ew candidate for the flattery of these wily jjlain- 
tiffs'. The ncAV hero, the new "workshop of the 
Avorld'' is Germany. Already these wily plaintiffs, 
through Roosevelt diplomacy, have effected the 
German Agreement, which virtually levels our tar- 
iff-dike towards Germany; and already the psalm- 
singers of these wily plaintiffs are draping the 
shoulders of German skill and genius with the same 
mantel of superiority with which they first draped 
England's and then ours, as they led us in suc- 
cession to industrial slaughter. And thus these 
wily plaintiffs will go on in their cruel career, 
despoiling one nation after another, until modern 
intelligence and humanity put an end forever to 
their havoc. 

And now, your Honors, let us take up this list 
of wonderful virtues, four in number, offered by 
counsel for these wily plaintiffs but a short time 
l)ack, and compare each one of them with our list 
of handicaps, also offered to you a little while 
ago, and test their validity as bases upon which we 
may rest as the superlatively superlative in pro- 
duction througli all the countless ages hence, un- 
til the sun hangs a black moon in the sky and our 
])lanet has been gathered to its fathers, "Where 
th<^ wicked cease from troubling and the weary 
ai'(^ at i'(\st." 



3G3 

Making this comparison of the wily plaintiffs' 
list of wonders and our own list of handicaps, we 
observe that counsel's reason No. 1 for our 
terribleness as world-beaters is a local and alter- 
able handicap, as it is included in "labor and 
health conditions;'' and is a mere trap set for the 
uuAvary. If we ventured out on ice as thin as that 
in the "conquest of the world's markets," we would 
be certain to fall in. By the w^ay, "our people" 
are practically all European people, except those 
of African descent; and whatever "energy and en- 
terprise" we may have is a rill which ris'es no 
higher than its source. Now as to reason No. 2 
for our almighty almightiness as food for the Im- 
porting Trust, that reason also falls in the same 
subdivision as No. 1 in our table, both as to 
machinery and as to "inventive talent," which lat- 
ter is all imported and therefore not peculiar to us*. 

Taking up counsel's reason No. 3 for our pe- 
culiar peculiarness' as all-conquerors of the 
"worlds markets," that, according to our table, 
is an unalterable universal handicap, which exists 
against us in the cost-20 world about sixteen-fold 
as much as it exists for us in our own cost-100 
country. 

Passing to counseFs breath-taker No. 4, we find 
it an alterable qovernmental handicap. If we lean- 
ed on that reed alone, in face of the great handi- 
cap which the whole world holds against us in a 
pay-roll but one-fifth as high as ours, it would let 
us down and we surely would fall to our own 
hurt. 

And so, your Honors, in every case in which the 
baudmen of the wily plaintiffs, the Importing 
Trust, sound the cymbals of triumph over the 
"unexamplerl" or "inexhaustible" muchness of our 



364 

exceeding great much, a comparison of our alleged 
specific "corners" with those named in our table 
will show that, as bases upon which to build our 
national fortunes, they are as unstable as water 
and at best could serve only as fleeting pretexts 
for damaging the dike and pouring water on the 
Importing Trust mill. 

We would especially put you on your guard, 
your Honors, against certain superficial assaults 
which we are certain counsel for the wily plain- 
tiffs will make upon the law we have explained. 
They will tell you, for instance, that latitude is 
not always connected with climate in such a way 
as to ^ive the colder to the higher and the w^armer 
to the lower latitude. They may tell you, for in- 
stance, that, latitude for latitude, our whole Atlan- 
tic coast is colder than our Pacific coast; that, 
say, England is as far north as* our Labrador and 
yet has earlier springs than New England; and so 
on, in order to prove that cost of subsistence does 
not vary directly with latitude. It is true, your 
Honors, that here and there ocean currents running 
close to the land affect its temperature; and that 
certain localities thus affected may have either a 
his/her or lower temperature than places in the same 
latitude but far removed from the neighborhood of 
such ocean currents. It is also true that places in 
the same latitude, but at different heights or alti- 
tudes above sea-level, will have different climates. 
We all know that the high table-lands of the tropics 
have climates very much like our own, although 
down the hill a little way it may be much hotter 
and the style of dress of Mother Eve would be very 
burdensome. Then again, they say that, in a gen- 
eral way, distances from the oceans also govern 
temperature and that tlie larger and heavier tlie 



365 

land-mass, the more slowlj^ does its temperature 
change from season to season. Nevertheless, your 
Honors, latitude after all is the strongest factor 
among those affecting climates, and, taking the 
earth around, it will be found that, comparing any 
two considerable areas of the earth together, the 
average temperature of the area in the higher lat- 
itude will be lower than that in the lower latitude; 
and that, the greater their differences in average 
latitude, the greater will be their differnces in aver- 
age temperatures, the higher latitude uniformly 
showing the lower and the lower the higher tem- 
perature. Take our own country, for instance: 
The higher temperature of our Pacific coast is re- 
duced to the common world's average, from latitude 
to latitude, by the lower temperature of our At- 
lantic coast. 

Therefore we say that, when all is said and done, 
your Honors, and any two large areas of the earth's 
surface are considered as competing under "re- 
vised" tariff-dikes, differences in latitude, provid- 
ed that they are worth noticing at all, are the only 
things which finally count The greater number of 
possible "handicaps," as the word is used in our 
law, belong, as our table shows, among the alter- 
ahles: that is, any one of them can be altered at 
any time a country desires; and if such alteration 
was all that stood between any country's Exporting 
Trust and our market, with its 80% higher cost 
of production than the world's average, all the 
wealth of that Exporting Trust would be brought 
to bear upon that country's rulers to effect the al- 
teration. Our position is so extraordinary with re- 
gard to wages aud so with regard to the absolutely 
necessary cost of production, that, with our tariff- 
dike low, to 2rive our domestic market to the Tm- 



366 

porting Trust here, tlie alteration on the part of 
other countries would need to extend to but one 
or two of the alterable s in our list. In the matter 
of the alterable of wage-scales, the}^ are already so 
low abroad that no alteration there will be neces- 
sary to take our market, if onl}^, as Mr. Taft and 
Dr. Butler so stronglj' urge, our goyernmental al- 
terable, the tariff-dike, is suitably altered. But 
even if our dike is not "revised^' to fit the case, if 
foreign countries materially alter their local alter- 
able of machinery^ unless we in turn build our dike 
higher to meet the change, thej^ will take our do- 
mestic market. As we have before stated, the Ger- 
man Government has secured the alteration of our 
qovernmental alterable, the administration clause 
of the Dingley Law, in such a way that the Ger- 
mans now practically have a great part of our do- 
mestic market, about the same as they would if 
there was no dike at all. Our swiftly increasing 
imports from Germany since that alteration was 
made by Mr. Koosevelt to please Herr Yon Stern- 
burg, prove the fickle character of these alterables. 
Even without this lift, Germany's cost-30 produc- 
tion was fast making our tariff -dike ineffective to 
shut out German goods. 

So it will be found that nearly all the handi- 
caps which the Importing Trust declares are in our 
favor and would give us the "the markets of the 
world," even with the dike merely "revised" in any 
way but uniformly upward, are such that, if such 
handicaps were then all that stood between any 
nation and its desire, they would be quickly dis- 
counted with appropriate alterations at home by 
such nation. 

And it Avill be further found that the handicaps 
credited to us which are not alterables nnd so too 



367 

lickle to be tru^led, are uulvcrml lutaitcrahlcs, and 
therefore, cannot be depeni^ed upon at all in ''re- 
vised'' tariff conij)etition even with single nations 
of any large areas of soil, to saj^ nothing about their 
sustaining us in a struggle with the whole world 
outside. 

So much for the ''handicaps'' which the Import- 
ing Trust, playing spider to our fly, says are so 
perennially in our favor that we need fear nothing 
from ''revision." 

Now what of the handicaps against us, the trump 
cards in the hands of our competitors? In the 
first place, their alterable governmental handicaps 
fully offset ours, with the exception of benign old 
Mother England, Avho is always generous before she 
is just and favors' all creation before she favors her 
own children. She has no governmental alterables 
to oppose us with; and she is dying by inches be- 
cause of her generosity. As to local alterables ^ the 
world beats us hollow in wage-scales; it has as 
much capital as we have and a lot of our capital in 
the bargain, about a billion of our dollars having 
left us in the last few years to build foreign fac- 
tories and join our Importing Trust in its attack 
on our dike. The world's labor and health are, on 
the average, just as good as ours. Its machinery is 
looking up, either from buying ours or making its 
own. It seldom bu^^s our dear stuff more than once 
unless it is patented. It usually copies our ma- 
chinery after a few purchases. As to freights and 
transportation, England and Germany are building 
canals; and the steamship lines are making for 
them through rates from Europe to Chicago lower 
than those we pay from New York to Chicago ; and 
their organization and methods are in their own 
hands and would be brought up to standard in a 



368 - 

luomeut if their lagging behind us in such matters 
Avas the only thing which kept them from our mark- 
et; but the great advantage in their wage-scale, as 
they say themselves, makes modern machinery and 
organization unnecessary to capture our domestic 
market, if our tariff-dike is not too high, or if Ger- 
man Agreements are in full swing. If weakness in 
any one of these points really limits their markets 
with us they attend to it quicker. Now setting off 
the universal unalterables which we have against 
those which they have, there are left the most im- 
portant of all, viz : the limited unalterables; and a 
glance shows' that we are hopelessly licked by 
20,000,000 square miles of the earth's surface in 
every limited unalterable , and that in this group 
stand the greatest factors in the world for cheap- 
ness of produtcion. We have already indicated the 
portions of the earth which ^^lay over" us in these 
respects and we will not repeat. But the fact alone 
of our hopeless position in regard to the limited un- 
alterables should make us all join in a grand "shut- 
up'' antiphonal whenever the choir of the Import- 
ing Trust intones its anthem "Eevision of the 
Dike." The only direction in which the dike should 
be "revised" is skyward; and get there as soon as 
possible. 



XXX. 

These wily plaintiffs^ like great spiders^ have 
SPUN their entangling web over the white 

HOUSE. 

We think we have explained, your Honors, the 
nature of these wily plaintiffs. They are mere 



3G9 

groups of brain-cells developed by an environment 
which compelled unremitting acquisitiveness. No 
conscience has ever been identihed among these 
brain-cells. They have been gathered by centuries 
of circumstance. In this countrj^, they are an an- 
achronism. Thy never open their mouths except to 
bleat ' 'foreign trade.'' None of their newspaper 
contingent ever mentions any foreign country with- 
out mechanically stating its importance in "trade." 
This peculiar vein in these wily plaintiif's is in- 
herited by them from their English ancestors. Eng- 
land has long been a ridiculous country. She is 
about the size of New York State; but she has 
kicked up more bobbery than any other country in 
the world — far more than we ever have ; and we are 
about seventy times its size. How has she done 
so? By foreign trade. By pawning her patrimony; 
by auctioning off her natural deposits of iron and 
coal in the competitive "markets of the world.'' 
England is like a woman, who, attiring herself 
with a richness beyond her income sufficient for 
temperate living, pawns her household furniture 
piece by piece. Thus she has caused to be advanced 
to herself great loans on her furniture, putting up 
as a pledge with the World Uncle her title to long 
life. She has sold herself for power and wealth ; and 
foreign trade has been her instrument of sale. Of 
course "trade" is the first thing Englishmen think 
about. That is what they are always spilling their 
blood for; because foreign trade is the only means 
by which England can maintain herself in any size 
comparable to that of her continental contempor- 
aries; like a i^oor little frog, inflated to ten times 
its natural dimensions by the wind of foreign 
trade I This is true because every country's actual 
size in trade is fixed by the consuming power of its 



870 

own population. In other A^'o^ds, a country, noi'- 
mally, is as rich as its own domestic market. That 
tells the story of national health. The foreign mark- 
et of a nation tells the story of the accumulation 
of wealth in the hands of a country's Importing and 
Exporting Trusts; of the pawning of the natural 
stores of the nation for the benefit of its foreign 
trading class. By dissipating her natural wealth in 
the most wanton way, and by congesting her wage- 
producers on narrower and narrower lines of em- 
ployment, England has anticipated by centuries the 
legitimate income from her resources. Her own 
people were too few to buy enough of her products 
to result in the wealth to which she aspired. There- 
fore foreign markets became to her the conditions 
of her remaining the proud Brittani^t which so long 
has ruled the wave. A little country naturally, for- 
eign trade was used to make her great artificially. 
Now, your Honors, as w^e have said before, these 
wily plaintiffs are not of sudden grow^th. They 
came to us from England. They are mere English 
replica of English editions of English traditions. 
In this noble country they are not a drop in the 
bucket of us. We are a great country by nature 
and do not require the artifice of foreign trade 
maintained by these plaintiffs. But it is the^^ who 
live by foreign trade and it is they who have con- 
trol especially of our great seaboard cities, and 
have studiously made it the fashion of the country 
to speak of foreign trade as if foreign trade were 
that wherein we lived and moved and had our be- 
ing. We are merely hypnotic subjects, your Hon- 
ors. We, the great people of this country, have no 
need of foreign trade but are burdened and cursed 
by it for the private benefit of these wily plaintiffs. 
They take their tolls from us at every turn. We 



371 

pay higher prices than we siiuiild because ol our 
Exporting Trust, which sends our products abroad 
and out of our reach. AVhy, your Honors, we send 
over two hundred and twenty-five millions of 
dollars' worth of meat of various kinds abroad 
every jeRY, instead of keeping it at home to 
loAver the price to ourselves. And so it is with 
wheat and corn, cotton, petroleum and other things. 
And so on the other hand, we get lower wages than 
we ought, because of the Importing Trust bringing 
in nearly two billions of dollars' worth of goods 
a year and extinguishing our employment to that 
extent; for we could make every cent's worth of 
these goods ourselves, or equally satisfactory sub- 
stitutes, if it were not for our leaking tariff- dike. 

But a mere handful of our people, by this con- 
stant hypnotism, this assiduous suggestion through 
the newspapers, keep foreign trade before us as the 
only thing to hope for. Why, your Honors, the 
whole thing is too absurd to talk about. For 
every penny's worth of foreign trade we do, 
we do nearly sixty cents' worth of domestic 
business, las' shown by our bank clearings. And 
every cent's worth of foreign trade we do de- 
stroys at least ten cents' worth of business" by 
blocking exchanges which otherwise would have 
come from a like amount of business having been 
done here. The whole thing is of incalcuable dam- 
age to us ; and yet it is our one hope of glory ! We 
know who thus sets it up, do we not? We know for 
whom it is profitable to increase exports to Cuba 
by a few millions; even though by the same Reci- 
procity Treaty our imports increase so much that we 
are scoring a national net loss of |66,000,000 a year. 
Why, your Honors, it would be much cheaper for us 
to pay our Exporting Trust $10,000,000 a year clean 



372 

money out of the national treasury, and abrogate 
the Cuban Treaty, than to continue the Treaty in 
force and buy business for our Exporting Trust at 
such a tremendous loss. But, your Honors, it is 
too plain for talk that, just as Mother England does 
for her great parasites, we, too, both for our Im- 
porting Trust and our Exporting Trust, buy foreign 
trade at an enormous price. And just as England 
does in keeping a great navy for her parasites, we 
too pay for it all out of the treasury of our national 
wealth and compromise our progress ; but these wily 
plaintiffs put the whole proceeds of their trading 
in their pockets. Foreign trade is their business. 
It is the only thing in sight for them. Therefore 
they industriously work the newspapers to make us 
think it is the only thing in sight for us also. 
Aren't our brain-cells of a very unsophisticated 
sort, your Honors, that we should thus keep on driv- 
ing fish to the private nets of these wily plaintiffs ! 
Your Honors, using our vocabulary with the 
same discreetness with which Mr. Koosevelt uses 
his, we aver that these wily plaintiffs are indeed 
"malefactors of great wealth'^ and that together 
they form what is easily the wickedest "trust'' in al^ 
the world. We are aware, however, your Honors, 
that both of these wily plaintiffs are highly elusive 
as well as illusory. We do not say that they are 
formally incorporated. We do not even say that 
they have any definite organization as a whole. It 
is true that powerful trade organizations, such as 
the Association of National Manufacturers, as' ex- 
ample, seem to work together for the destruction of 
our tariff-dike Avith a harmony that is miraculous 
if it be not intelligently concerted. It is true that 
"boards of trade" and similar bodies move towards 
the destruction of our tariff-dike with a rhythm 



that suggests conspired as well as iuspired action. 
It is also true that the professors of our colleges, 
and generally the presidents of our colleges also, 
strike one and the same chord upon the matter of 
tariff ^'revision"; and throughout the length and 
breadth of this country, the same people, at the 
same intervals, join in a swelling chorus of maledic- 
tions against the '^robber tariff'- and say that "this 
protective tariff system has distorted the functions 
of a free government into tools of greed and vehicles 
of oppression,'' ^* or words to that effect. They are 
souls with but a single thought and hearts that beat 
as one. And yet, your Honors, there is no outward 
and visible sign of any connection at all between 
all these different kinds of people who detest 
American Production. But we account easily for 
the choral nature of their attack by the fact that 
from time immemorial, there have been among us 
people who have not thought themselves directly 
benefited by American Production, as well as peo- 
ple, notably members of the Importing Trust, who 
have felt themselves directl^^ aggrieved by American 
Production, for the reason that the greater the vol- 
ume of the latter's output the smaller their chance 
to peddle foreign goods in this market. And, your 
Honors, these people have arrived at a telharmon- 
ical coincidence of emotion upon this subject. They 
have so long sung in the same choir, that, if any 
member of the choir so much as hums a measure of 
their old anthem, the entire host raises its voice in 
unison in one prolonged scream against the "trusts'' 
that "screw up prices at home even when they screw 
them down abroad," and from that moment until 
the tariff-dike has been wrecked and the wily plain- 

* Governor Folk. 



374 

tilf, the Importing Trust, has Ccnrkd aWaj the last 
cent of the Amercian savings bank fund, sometimes 
still in chorus, sometimes in sonorous antiphonal, 
but always with sevenfold hellish din, the goods 
and chattels of these wil3^ plaintiifs continue to 
damn the dike. Why, your Honors, it is surprising 
how few in numbers, compared with our whole 
people, these creatures of the Importing and Ex- 
porting Trusts are ! And yet their concerted shriek 
sets the whole country pell mell for the exit. It is 
like the cry of ^'Fire" ! by i^ne little cup-full of wits 
in a crowded theatre. Bless your hearts! there is 
no fire, but merely a glint of calcium light on the 
curtain, which the jay is unaccustomed to; but it 
does the job; one group of sickly yellow brain-cells 
jumbles five hundred blood-red ones and a hundred 
people crushed to death is the harvest. And it is the 
same with these sordid mischief-makers, the wily 
plaintiffs herein; only they hire the jay to holler 
"Fire!'^ and then pick the pockets of the stamped- 
ing crowd and even of those slain in the crush. 

Your Honors, would it be possible for there to be 
such a thing as a tacit conspiracy; a sort of con- 
certed action which took place from a species of 
thought-transference? It seems to us that such a 
thing is possible; nay, your Honors, such a thing- 
has happened ; either a tacit conspiracy or a trans- 
action which might be called by an uglier word. 
For, your Honors, these wily plaintiffs have ubi- 
quitous power. It bobs up everywhere. And there 
seems to be such an affinity in graft that one touch 
of graft-emotion makes a whole political world kin. 

So we have long been pained to think, your 
Honors, that somehow, by a sort of tacit conspir- 
acy^, these wily plaintiffs have possession at this 
moment of the National Government; and that the 



375 

present inmate of the White House was placed 
there by them and its press bureau. At any rate, 
Mr. Koosevelt seems to be suffering from a sort of 
conspiracy obsession, as if, himself the product of a 
conspiracy — a tacit conspiracy, your Honors — 
knowing his own origin as a White House incum- 
bent, the spirit of conspiracy haunted him like 
Banquo's ghost. For you will remember, your Hon- 
ors, how quickly he scented out the conspiracy of 
rich men, with their f 5,000,000 pool to beat him and 
"my policies," when Mr. Harriman's genius — good 
or evil, your Honors? — published the ^^practicaV^ 
letter from Mr. Koosevelt to this "malefactor of 
great wealth," asking for assistance to secure the 
vote of New York State, and that too almost the 
night before election day, Avhen money could find 
but one use to help the Eepublican candidate. Then 
you will remember how, in his Provincetown speech 
on August 20, 1907, he seemed to be haunted with 
Banquo's conspiracy-ghost again, for he said : 



"On the New York Stock Exchange the disturbance 
has "been particularly severe, most of it I believe to be 
due to matters not particularly confined to the United 
States, and to matters wholly unconnected with any 
governmental action, BUT IT MAY WELL BE THAT 
THE DETERMrNTATION OF THE GOVERNMENT, IN 
WHICH, GENTLEMEN, IT WILL NOT WAVER, TO 
PUNISH CERTAIN MALEFACTORS OF GREAT 
WEALTH, HAS BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR SOME- 
THING OF THE TROUBLES, AT LEAST TO THE 
EXTENT OF HAVING CAUSED THESE MEN TO COM- 
BINE TO BRING ABOUT AS MUCH FINANCIAL 
STRESS AS THEY POSSIBLY CAN IN ORDER TO 
DISCREDIT THE POLICY OF THE GOVERNMENT 
AND THEREBY SECURE A REVERSAL OF THAT 
POLICY SO THAT THEY MAY ENJOY THE FRUITS 
OF THEIR OWN EVIL DOING. 

"That they have misled many good people into be- 
lieving that there should be such reversal of policy, is 
possible. If so, I am sorry, but it will not alter my atti- 
tude. Once for all, let me say that, as far as I am con- 
cerned, and for the eighteen months of my administration 
that remain, there will be no change in the policy we 
have steadily pursued," 



370 

Your Honors, don^t the Good Book say some- 
where, ^'He who accuses another of conspiracy, un- 
less he prove the same, shall himself be accused of 
conspiracy?'' We think it does, or words to that 
effect; but at any rate, there is an old-fashioned 
saying somewhere something like this, "It takes a 
rogue to catch a rogue. '- 

Now, your Honors, we are not going to accuse 
any one of conspiracy, lest we come under the 
stress of the passage from the Good Book just re- 
ferred to; but we wisli to call particular attention 
to the fact that Mr. Eoosevelt, ever since he became 
President Avith a free hand, has been doing exactly 
what these Avily plaintiffs, or either of them, would 
have done itself if President of the United States, 
viz., he has been using every means, fair or foul, 
to discredit and destroy American Production, our 
client, for the express benefit of these wily plain- 
tiffs, the misappropriation of the American savings 
bank fund by the Importing Trust, and the conver- 
sion of Congress into a sort of directorate of Ameri- 
can manufacturers, in the interest of the Exporting 
Trust, to sacrifice our producers of so-called "raw 
materials" to the increased profit of said wily plain- 
tiff in its export trade 

It looks to us, your Honors, also, as if Mr. Roose- 
velt, in saying, "Once for all, let me say that, as far 
as I am concerned, and for the eighteen months of 
my administration that remain, there will be no 
change in the policy we have steadily pursued/' 
merely passed the word to these wily plaintiffs that 
they might pursue their own "policy" of scream- 
ing down the "trusts" with the perfect assurance 
that he would do liis part and continue to discredit 
our client, American Production, to the limit. 



377 

It also looks to us, your Honors, as if these wily 
plaintiffs were at the bottom of the wild insistence 
mth which Mr. Koosevelt was' nominated to the 
vice-presidency in 1900 on the McKinley ticket; 
and that the press-agency of these wily plaintiffs 
was at the bottom of the wide advertisement of Mr. 
Eoosevelt's trust-busting virtues which led to his 
re-election, to the profound grief of American Pro- 
duction, in 1904. For it was well known that Mr. 
Roosevelt was the open enemy of American Produc- 
tion, in that he was a graduate of a notorious Free 
Trade College and a member of the celebrated Cob- 
den Club, and that he looked upon "protection" 
merely with the tolerant eye of the temporizing poli- 
tician, as shown by the following extract from page 
67 of his life of Benton : 

"Free traders are apt to look at the tariff from a 
sentimental standpoint, but it is in reality purely a busi- 
ness matter, and should be decided solely on grounds of 
expediency. Political economists have pretty generally 
agreed that protection is vicious in theory and harmful 
in practice; but if the majority of the people in interest 
wish it, and it affects only themselves, there is no earthly 
reason why they should not be allowed to try the experi- 
ment to their heart's content." 

It is evident from this quotation that Mr. Roose- 
velt never had any convictions on the protection 
issue which would have seemed to these wily plain- 
tiffs objectionable in their representative at the 
head of the Government. Mr. Roosevelt, in fact, has 
strong convictions adverse to our client, American 
Production. Ever since his independent attach- 
ment to the presidential hitching post he has been 
champing the bit to be freed from the bridle of pro- 
tection. On this point, we quote Mr George Gris- 
wold Hill in the August number, 1907, of the North 
American Review, in an article evidently inspired 
bv Mr. Roosevelt himself: 



378 

"No feature of the President's policies is more widely 
misunderstood than his attitude on the tariff. He has 
long believed that the time has arrived when revision of 
the Dingley tariff act is advisable. True, there have 
been evils which he has regarded as of paramount im- 
portance — as, for instance, the granting of railway re- 
bates, overcapitalization, etc.; but on a number of occa- 
sions he has summoned the leaders of his party and sought 
to impress on them the advisability of tariff readjust- 
ment, only to learn that the determined opposition of 
Speaker Cannon and his associates in the Horse consti- 
tuted an insuperable obstacle. On one occasion, in his 
annual message of 1904, he went so far as to give notice 
of a special message in which he would urge tariff re- 
vision. He wrote, 'On the subject of the tariff I will ad- 
dress you later.' But the earnest representations of the 
leaders of his party that tariff revision would be impos- 
sible at a short session and that notice given so far in 
advance of a special session to be called for this purpose 
would seriously unsettle business led him to order the 
line quoted to be stricken from the message after the 
advance copies had been furnished to the press. In Janu- 
ary, 1905, he secured the assent of the Senate leaders, not 
excluding Senator Aldrich, who has long been known as 
*the high-priest of protection,' to a special session for 
tariff revision to be called soon after March 4th; but the 
continued opposition of the Speaker and a few other 
leaders of the House demonstrated the futility of such 
a course. Mr. Roosevelt is now of the opinion that it 
would be unwise to attempt tariff revision in the coming 
Congress, but he will exert his influence to commit irre- 
vocably the Republican party, in its next national plat- 
form, to the programme of summoning Congress in special 
session to revise the tariff, immediately after March 4th, 
1909." 

We exclaim in passing, with deep reverence and 
thank fulness, "God bless that iron- willed Speaker 
for so stannchly standing between his conntry and 
the deluge of Eooseveltian ignorance!" Please 
mark, yonr Honors, we did not say "Eooseveltian 
servility to the Importing Trust." 

We also remark in passing that, if the Repub- 
lican party follows Mr. Roosevelt in framing its 
platforui in 1908, it Avill "march through a slaugh- 
ter house to au open grave," and it will richly de- 
serve its fate. 

We think w(^ have shown IMr. Roosevelt's entire 
lijU'Diouy with tlieso wily plaiutifps iu their purpos'p 



379 

of destroying the tariff-dike and raping our sav- 
ings-bank fund. 

But again we protest that we do not say that 
there is even a tacit conspiracy between Mr. Roose- 
velt and these wily plaintiffs. We only say that if 
these wily plaintiffs had raked the world over for 
a better instrument for their purposes', they could 
not have found one. Mark, your Honors, the va- 
rious things that followed Mr. Roosevelt's elevation 
to the presidency, in as rapid succession as the slow 
procession of national events would permit : 

1. Mr. Roosevelt dismissed as a "disturber" Hon. 
Wilbur F. Wakeman from the General Appraiser- 
ship at the port of New York, where this* gentleman 
"stood like a stone wall" between the wage-pro- 
ducers of this country and the flood of foreign sur- 
plus products which undervaluation would have 
invited over our tariff-dike. This dismissal was at 
the express instance of the New York wing of the 
Importing Trust and certain Republican politicians 
to whose campaign contributions the Importing 
Trust had been wont to contribute. In addition to 
the removal of Mr. Wakeman, as a "disturber" of 
the quiet in which the Importing Trust otherwise 
would have been permitted to filch the savings of 
the wage-producers of this country, various equally 
^'atchful and faithful officials were transferred by 
Mr. Roosevelt's order to remote parts of the coun- 
try, where they could not longer "disturb" New 
York importers. Please note, your Honors, that 
these were acts directly hostile to our client, Ameri- 
can Production. 

2. As soon as possible after his coming to the 
presidency, Mr. Roosevelt forced the Cuban Treaty 



380 

through Congress with his Big Stick. This was in 
direct violation of the Kepublican Platform, a most 
treacherous abandonment of the policy of protec- 
tion, and a w^anton sacrifice of the Western Farm- 
ers, and, generally, an act of "perfidy and dis- 
honor'' unparalleled in American politics. It was 
done at the direct behest of the New York wing 
of th-e Importing Trust, to the infinite damage of 
our client, American Production, and at an actual 
net cash loss to this country of |66,000,000 last 
year, with the figures likely to double in the next 
year or two. This was a decisive step in the direc- 
tion of free trade for the benefit of these wily plain- 
tiffs. So far from responding in kind, the Cubans 
take the $66,000,000 in cash which we pay in the 
balance against us, and buy goods of Europe. 

3. In his message to Congress in December, 1906, 
Mr. Roosevelt recommended Free Trade with the 
Philippine Islands, saying: "Free Trade with the 
Philippine Islands can do no harm to any American 
industry." This recommendation was made at the 
request of the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, 
and Mr. Taft, Mr. Roosevelt's proposed lineal suc- 
cessor to the presidential office. Free Trade with 
the Philippines would be for us Free Trade with 
the whole world through the Philippine Hole in the 
Wall. 

4. Mr. Roosevelt, evidently through the influence 
of the Importing Trust, surrounds himself with 
members of the Importing Trust. His Secretary of 
State is Mr. Root, who pushed the unsuspecting Mc- 
Kinley into Free Trade with Porto Rico, a direct 
blow to our client, American Production, and a step 
which one day will be responsible for the starvation 



381 

of many an American wage-producer. His Secre- 
tary of War is Mr. Taft, an unmitigated Free 
Trader, as proven by his Columbus speech, in which 
his reasons for fervently advocating "tariff revi- 
sion" were none other than reasons for Free Trade. 
His Secretary of Commerce and Labor is Mr. Oscar 
S. Straus, a New York importer and notorious Free 
Trader, who is entirely out of sympathy with 
our client, American Production, and is committed 
without reservation to the increase of American im- 
ports through a cutting down of the tariff-dike. 
And Mr. Eoosevelt's Secretary of the Treasury is 
Mr. George B. Cortelyou, a Democrat, and a nat- 
ural sympathizer with the Importing Trust. 

Your Honors, we submit that these members of 
the Importing Trust were not assembled by chance 
in the Cabinet of a Harvard graduate, a member 
of the more than notorious Free Trade Cobden 
Club and a concocter of German Agreements ; and 
we do not think that their presence in the Cabinet 
is reconcilable with the Eepublican Platform, if 
the deliverance of that platform on the subject of 
protection was meant for anything but political 
buncombe; at any rate, such a cabinet is not recon- 
cilable with the good faith of the President and his 
intentions with regard to our client, American Pro- 
duction. 

5. Mr. Eoosevelt instigated, approved and pro- 
mulgated the German Trade Agreement, which 
turns over to the Germans the power to fix their 
own tariffs on vast volumes of goods which they 
send into this country. For the agreement permits 
them to fix an "export" price by simply changing 
the label on their goods ; and the "export" price so 
fixed can be so low as to destroy all the protection 



382 

in the Dingley Law for the makers of similar goods 
here. This agreement also provides' that our spe- 
cial treasury agents shall be certified to the German 
Government. This means that they are acceptable 
or resectable by the German Government. These 
special agents are our attorneys or representatives 
in guarding our interests in the valuation of Ger- 
man exports to this country. To give the German 
Government the power to accept or reject these 
agents is the same as to give a criminal at the bar 
the power of selecting his own judge and jury from 
among his companions in the crime for which he is 
to be tried. For in any contest relative to exports 
to this country, which we may have with that Gov- 
ernment, it gives the German Government power to 
s'elect our attorney and the judge who sits on the 
case. This is plainly the work of the Importing 
Trust, operating through its employe, Mr. Eoose- 
velt. It is said that Mr. Boot negotiated this agree- 
ment. If he did, it must have been as the repre- 
sentative of the German Government; for our peo- 
ple seem not to have been represented, so far as the 
interests of our client, American Production, are 
concerned. 

The knitting mills of Chemnitz, Germany, were 
for many years the deadly antagonists of our knit- 
ting mills in the Mohawk Valley, and the Germans 
practiced every trick by which to cheat our tariff 
laws and destroy our knitting factories. At last, 
w^e believe during the incumbency of the General 
Appraisership of the Port of New York by Mr. 
Wakeman, so ignominiously removed by Mr. Roose- 
velt for simply doing Ids duty, these Chemnitz peo- 
ple were reduced to some kind of order and our 
knitting mills flourished as never before. We wish 
to inquire, whether or not, to square the old grudge 



383 

which he had agaiubi Mr. AA'akeinan and auy thing 
he did to help our client, American Production, Mr. 
Eoosevelt took special delight in leveling our knit- 
ting mills b}^ the German Agreement? We ask be- 
cause contemi)oraneousl3^ with the appearance of 
figures showing the great increase of our imports 
from German knitting mills permitted by the Ger- 
man Agreement, we read the following in the New 
York Globe of November 11, 1907 : 

"Amsterdam, N. Y., Nov. 11. — The knitting mills of A. 
B. Morris & Son, Yunds, Kennedy & Yunds, and Gradner, 
Waring & Co., employing about forty-five hundred hands, 
have closed down. Salesmen on the road have been un- 
able to make a sale for four weeks. It is feared that 
many other knitting mills in the Mohawk Valley will 
have to shut down." 

This is a result which was prophesied by intelli- 
gent people the moment the terms of the German 
Agreement w^ere made known. And this is but the 
beginning of the deadly Avork which either the 
ignorance or something worse of the most reckless 
and ruthless Chief Executive Avith Avhich the Ameri- 
can people were ever afflicted executed in the dead 
of a dark-lantern night. 

Ever since Mr. Roosevelt's coming to full power, 
under cover of attacking the railroads and the 
^'trusts," he has waged relentless w^ar on American 
Production. In doing this work of destruction, no 
theory can account for the venom which he has 
shown against American Production, except one 
which points to the Importing Trust as the moving 
influence. 

Your Honors, w^e repeat once more and protest 
that we do not charge Mr. Roosevelt with conspir- 
ing directly with the wily plaintiffs, in the first 
place, to secure his nomination on the Republican 



384 

licKi^t in 1900; in tlie second place, lo secnre his 
renomination and election in 1904 ; and, in the third 
j)lace, to secure the election in his own place and 
stead, in 1908, of Mr. Taft, his friend and fellow 
laborer for the destruction of our client, American 
Production ; and we do not say that Mr. Roosevelt 
is anxious to have his bosom friend made President 
in order that he himself through his* presidential 
appointee, may still retain a hold on Federal pat- 
ronage and Federal favor in the State of New York, 
large enough to force his own election as a Senator 
from New York to the National Congress; and we 
reiterate that we make no charge of this kind ; but 
we also reiterate that if Mr. Roosevelt had been 
hired by the New York Importing Trust to do exact- 
ly what the Importing Trust wanted him to do, in 
doing all the matters and things we have enumer- 
ated, he certainly would have earned his money, 
and, in case of a dispute on that point, a fair jury 
would give him judgment. But, your Honors, why 
should we expect a different record from this on the 
part of Mr. Roosevelt? 

An inspection of his brain-cells does not justif}^ 
a different expectation. For those cells in the 
region of sympathy are scant}" and weak; and this 
is proven by his passion for shedding the innocent 
blood of his four-footed brothers and his careless- 
ness of the consequences to the lives of his victims 
following such action as he took in the Tyner mat- 
ter, the Brownsville matter, the Long matter, and 
the matters of the dismissed coachman and the sus- 
pended pilot Nicholls. In this respect jMr. Roose- 
velt is very much of a savage. 

Again, his* brain-cells which have to do with op- 
position, with fighting, and violent action, ai'e very 
fat and healthv and are innocent of race-suicide. 



3'85 

Considering the weakness of liis sympathy brain- 
cells, the strength of those last described make 
Mr. Eoosevelt a man rather liking the sight of blood 
than otherwise. He likes to shoot; and when he 
shoots, he shoots to kill; whether he is potting 
bears in Louisiana or "trusts/^ otherwise American 
Production, in Washington. 

Furthermore, the brain-cells that should compel 
prudence, discretion, deliberate and well-thought 
action are also weak; and this accounts for his 
headlong manner in employing the telegraph to dis- 
miss a Mississippi pilot, without judge or jury, and 
against the testimony of expert eye-witnesses that 
the deposed pilot was altogether blameless. Mr. 
Roosevelt supposed the poor fellow to have ap- 
proached his own boat too irreverently, that was all. 
In this Mr. Roosevelt is a good deal of a Kaiser. 
He forgets there are courts and orderly processes' 
to punish real offenders. He rolls up his sleeves 
and dips into the bloody job himself; as he did on 
Kettle Hill, when he threatened himself to shoot 
any fellow that ran away from the enemy, although 
none of those soldier boys had any more idea of 
running away than he had. 

And this suggests another group of brain-cells 
belonging to Mr. Roosevelt, which are very robust; 
and that is the group that, when large, causes vain- 
gioriousness, a longing for the lime-light; an indul- 
gence in swagger and bluster and a general aspira- 
tion to be the whole show. And this group, so 
large, round and rosy in Mr. Roosevelt, will not let 
him decline a third term. Nay, it is causing him 
this minute to listen to the entreaties of these wily 
plaintiffs to carry out the good work he has so 
well begun in their behalf, still keep his grip on the 
Republican press-agency, through which he has 



386 

filled the counti^ with a fictitious echo for tariff 
"revision/^ and himself conduct the "revision'' 
which the inspired article of his in the North 
American Review says he is and has been so anxious 
to effect. For, your Honors, we verily believe that 
Mr. Roosevelt himself, in the service of these wily 
plaintiffs, the Importing Trust and the Exporting 
Trust, and through his "cuckoo'' press, is at the 
very root of all the whispering we hear with regard 
to the country's desire for "tariff revision." We 
believe this sentiment is altogether fictitious, man- 
ufactured hj Mr. Roosevelt, through his servile 
press agency, in obedience to these Avily plaintiffs. 
And we believe, also, that Mr. Roosevelt is himself 
the real utterer of the "tariff-revision" sentiments 
given air to by Mr. Taft at Columbus; and we be- 
lieve that Mr. Taft is really Mr. Roosevelt in dis- 
guise.* 

We believe that Mr. Taft is Mr. Roosevelt's stalk- 
ing horse for the presidential nomination, and that 
it was through Mr. Taft that Mr. Roosevelt wanted 
to "smoke out" the country as to the state of its 
mind on "tariff revision," the same as Mr. Dickin- 
son, ex-member of White House "Cuckoos," said 
Mr. Roosevelt, by himself starting the Taft boom in 
Washington, "smoked out" the opposition to Mr. 
Taft. If having sprung the trap with Mr. Taft's 
speech at Columbus for a bait he finds the public 



* "In the judgment of men, of whom I am one there was a 
mistake in that change. In the light of history, I think it 
would have been better to have left the Presidential term of 
seven years with an accompanying ineligibility. [Applause.] 
If that were the provision we should not now have the spec- 
tacle of our strenuous President playing a game of hide and 
seek with the American people." [Laughter.] 

Mr. .Justice David J. Brewer, of the Supreme court of the 
United States, speaking before the Civic Forum at Carnegie 
Hall, New York City, Wednesday, Nov. 20, 1907, as reported 
in the N. Y. Sun. 



387 

indulgeut toNMirds ''tar ill* revisiou/' Mr. Roosevelt 
purposes to work the Eepublican Conyention so it 
will stand on its hind legs and howl for him; then 
his friend Taft, with a deep salaam, will gracefully 
and graciously withdraw in favor of his chief, Mr. 
Roosevelt, and Mr. Roosevelt Avill be nominated by 
acclamation, and the leaders of the Republican 
party will complete their performance of acting 
like little wooden monkeys running up and doAvn 
little wooden rods in the hands of Mr. Roosevelt, in 
which phase they have been figuring for the last five 
or six years. All this will have been cut and dried 
before hand, and then Mr. Roosevelt will shy his 
castor into the ring and rush in as the champion of 
tariff "revision" — all as these wily plaintiffs have 
planned and conspired for, lo, these many long 
moons. 

And this brings us to another group of brain- 
cells, also large, round and rosy, which gives Mr. 
Roosevelt tlie ability to contrive mises en scene, 
nominations by acclamation, ovations from the pop- 
ulace and all the other fixin's necessary to a success- 
ful demagogue's career; the same group which led 
him to rig Mr. Fairbanks with the "cocktail'' 
episode, which made the papers contrast the water- 
wagon Roosevelt with the sinful cocktail Fairbanks 
and report how the Water- Wagon in the Louisiana 
swamps, pot-shooting bear, "carried a noon lunch 
and a hottle of loater'^! This invaluable group of 
brain-cells, your Honors, invaluable above all to 
those who hope to fool all the people some of the 
time, is known in Phrenology^ as "secretiveness," an 
indispensable piece of head-furniture for gods and 
men, pickpockets and Presidents who pull wires for 
third terms. Put this robust group with that which 
makes for vain-s^loriousness and vou have a combi- 



3SS 

nation that is bound to fool a lot of innocent people 
all the time. 

There is another group of brain-cells, your Hon- 
ors, which is Aveak, yellow, and puling in Mr. 
Roosevelt's head-pantry — that is "weak'' only in 
comparison Avith the mightiness of his ambition, his 
war-thirstiness, and his secret! veness — and that is 
the group that if large would make him a philoso- 
pher. That group is the one which gives people 
an intuition of the relation of cause to effect. This 
deficiency on the part of Mr. Roosevelt's head-fur- 
niture, is a perfect godsend to his friends, these 
wilj plaintiffs; because Mr. Roosevelt can carry 
on his war against our client, American Produc- 
tion, and not see very clearly what others see, and 
that is that he is making people wonder if his think- 
ers don't need oiling. It makes him a zealous 
servant of these wily plaintiffs without quite real- 
izing what a holy show he is making of himself to 
people who have no bats in their belfry. 

We know, your Honors, that this country is full 
of simple-hearted people who don't know gold 
bricks when all the gold is scraped off and the red 
shows through ; and we know that these good folks 
would never believe that they had only been fooled 
by a presidential press-agency into the silly no- 
tion that Mr. Roosevelt is not the humble servant 
of these wily plaintiffs; and they would never be- 
lieve that to trust in him and follow him up hill 
and down dale would be to dig a great pit for the 
country's prosperity; to assure a greater or less 
destruction of our faithful tariff -dike, and so a 
greater or less destruction of the lives of our wage- 
producers. But Mr. Roosevelt's lack of natural 
sympathy, the mood and make which stand behind 
his thirst for the chase and its bloody goal, make 



389 

him sceptical a,s to the suffering which his fooling 
with the tariff-dike is sure to cause. We know that 
our hero-worshippers, with tlieir adoration fanned 
to flame by a press-agency with Mr. Roosevelt him- 
self working the bellows, will not listen to our hint 
that there is more than a platonic friendship be- 
tween their President and these wily plaintiffs ; but 
Avhether or not he has such a friendship for these 
wily plaintiffs, he has never shown the least sus- 
picion of friendship for our client, American Pro- 
duction. 

But, we ask again, why should he have any sym- 
pathy with American Production? He does not 
know w^hat it is to be compelled to produce or 
die. He was born with an independent fortune and 
has never needed to earn nor has he ever in his life, 
earned a dollar, honest or dishonest, except as a 
politician. He has landed in various offices as the 
result of strenuous politics ; but he has never "need- 
ed the money." He does not know what it is to 
have his factory closed by the jabbing of a hole in 
our anti-deluge tariff-dike, while his job "folded its 
tents like the Arabs, and as silently stole away," to 
the music of a houseful of children crying with 
hunger and cold and the sigh of a haggard and 
hunger-haunted wife into whose lap he could no 
longer toss his week's wages. Not having known 
these things and not being of a sympathetic nature, 
but rather of a nature that loves to hunt wild ani- 
mals, themselves the heads of families and also 
earning their daily bread, and cut them down with 
bullets from magazine rifles and stain the sad earth 
with their innocent blood, how could he be expected 
to sympathize with men out of work or to take any 
other view^ than the one he does take, viz., that the 
tariff-dike is merely a political plaything to be 



390 

tossed about as the interests of politics may re- 
quire? 

With such an origin, Mr. Roosevelt's natural 
sympathies are all with the pomp and pageantry 
and consequence of wealth and power. He has a 
notion that he was born to rule and that the king 
can do no wrong; for his course in the presidency 
has shown that he thinks that Avhat he does is right 
for the reason that he does it. He has the impa- 
tience under opposition that comes from the con- 
sciousness of his aristocratic antecedents. And jet, 
his servility to a flattering tongue, as, for instance, 
Baron Yon Ster*iiburg\s, shows a desire to accord 
with those who praise him that betrays the sprink- 
ling of plebeian blood with which his veins are 
unhappily disgraced. Impetuous, praise-loving, im- 
pulsive, his foresight often misses the target while 
his hindsight seldom makes a. bulFs eye. His con- 
stant longing is for popular clatter and applause 
and his constant act is climbing to the platform 
and parading himself in the lime-light. He is not 
gifted with wisdom, but longing much for at least 
its appearance, he studies iDhrase-making and the 
art of charming the vulgar ear with brave senten- 
ces ; therefore his speeches are but a string of cheap 
and easy platitudes such as school-boys early com- 
mit to memory from their copy-books. He would 
have the public think that he had a monopoly of 
the ^'square deal" pipe-line and that we were all at 
the mercy of his turning the cock on or off. H(^ 
does not seem to remember that the courts are Avith 
us to enforce a ^^square deal-' and that that is the 
sole business of our judicial system. In fact, he 
seems never to realize the existence of tlie courts 
at all except when they restrain him in some ov(^r- 
strenuous act, and then his only remark on the 



391 

situation is to express the hope that he can bring 
the courts around to his Avay of thinking; or to 
hint that future courts may be constituted so as 
to coincide witli him — gently and with an ivory 
hedged smile laying his hand on the sheath of his 
Big Stick the while. 

The qualities stimulated by the hunt and by his 
strenuous life in controlling primaries are seen in 
liis public acts. He leaps with steel-shod feet on 
the slim 3^oung body of the Spanish King; but 
salaams politely before the erect and irate Mikado. 
He cannot leave to the courts the guilt or innocence 
of a Tyner; to the courts-martial the trial of an 
alleged mutiny of colored troops; to the discrimin- 
ating public the decision as to the storj^-writing 
merits of a Long or to the proper board of inquiry 
the fault of a pilot Nicholls, but in noble fury, leap- 
ing single-handed to the centre of the stage he man- 
fully tries, condemns, sentences and executes every- 
body, holding it far better that ninety-nine inno- 
cent men should suffer than that a single guilty one 
should escape. 

Your Honors, Mr. Roosevelt has a capacity for 
serious mischief which, if he be not restrained by a 
regenerated public sentiment, may lead him to do 
as malevolent things to destroy our entire tariff- 
dike as he did to damage it with the Cuban Treaty. 
The capacity we refer to is that which makes him 
prostitute constitutional power given him for a 
public purpose to the forcing of reluctant legisla- 
tors to do his will for a private object. You may 
remember, your Honors, the circumstances under 
Avhich Mr. Roosevelt, right against the will and 
purpose of the Republican majority in Congress, 
succeeded in forcing through that body the Cuban 
Reciprocity Treaty, with all its frightful damage 



392 

to our own solid industrial development. You may 
remember the current report at that time, which 
was to the effect that, failing of the requisite num- 
ber of votes to get the measure through the House, 
Mr. Roosevelt sent for one after another of the 
balking members and used his own personal per- 
suasion to secure votes for the Treaty. He kept 
this up assiduously until he had "seen" nearly the 
whole list of recalcitrants. Meantime his press 
agency was set furiously at work flagellating the 
"insurgents," as they were ignominiously called, 
and pillorying their "selfishness" in setting the in- 
terests of their own little congressional beet-sugar 
districts over the "starving Cubans" — otherwise 
the New York Sugar Refining Compau}^, your Hon- 
ors — and their want of patriotism in not follow- 
ing the great and good patriot in the White House. 
These poor Congressmen knew that to pass tliis 
Treaty was merely to pass a bag of money out of 
the pockets of their constituents and the United 
States Treasury into the pocket of the Importing 
Trust. And yet, one after another, after Mr. Roose- 
velt had "seen" them, they fell in line and the 
Treaty finally went through by a good majority. 
Your Honors, what did Mr. Roosevelt say to these 
recalcitrant Congressmen, whom he thus put 
through the third degree? He got their votes, but 
how? Not by logic, your Honors. Not by convinc- 
ing those keen men that he was right and they were 
wrong. They were eternally right and they knew 
it. He was eternally wrong and his conscience, if 
he had any, knew that too. He was smaller in men- 
tal girth than they. He was and is and always will 
be weak in his causal brain-cells; and he was 
younger than they. They were keen reasoners, 
backed bv their absolute knowledge of the effect 



393 

of this Treaty on the country's wage-producers ; and 
many of them were gray-beards old enough to be 
his father. What was it that conquered them, your 
Honors? We do not say it, but some of the news- 
papers said that he threatened these Congressmen 
with political annihilation if they did not yield the 
point. He would destroy them in their districts at 
home by his press-agency ; and he would spoil their 
records in Congress by arranging with the Speaker 
of the House never to recognize them on the floor 
of Congress and thus to nullify their usefulness to 
their constituencies. We do not care what he said 
to them, your Honors. He had the power to injure 
those men if they did not yield. He knew it; and 
they knew it. He knew they knew it; and they 
knew he knew it What was this power? The 
part of it not contributed by his press-agency was 
the appointing power given him by the Constitu- 
tion for the convenience and authorit}^ of public 
business. It was not given him for the purpose of 
effacing Congress; not for the purpose of forcing 
Congressmen, in order to save their own heads, to 
vote against the interests of their constituents. But 
the fact that he could use this appointing power, 
as well as his press-agency, to effect the political 
death of these men overawed them and deprived 
this country of that to which it is entitled, viz., the 
benefit, on every public question before it, of the 
judgment of Congress as a deliberative body. When 
Mr. Eoosevelt sent for these Congressmen one after 
another and "talked them around," he destroyed 
Congress as a deliberative body. A man sensitive to 
the delicate relation which must exist between one 
who has power to do an injury and tlie person to 
whom the injury can be done, would have scorned 
to take the course taken by Mr, Roosevelt. But 



394 

above all tliiugs he is a politician and in that role 
he was, in the matter of the Cuban Treaty, a 
usurper of the power of Congress by diplomatic 
blackmail. For he forced Congressmen to give up 
their liberty of thought, speech and action to 
save their political lives. The}^ ceased to be Con- 
gressmen and became for the time political assets 
of Mr. Koosevelt. There seems to be no doubt that 
Mr. Eoosevelt, in fact, when he has some pet meas- 
ure which he wishes pushed through merely wipes 
out Congress by intimidation and himself becomes 
the Avhole sho^^^ It must be remembered that Mr. 
Roosevelt made the Cuban Treaty a private and 
personal measure of his own and secured for him- 
self alone whatever reAvard was held out to him 
as compensation for thus forcing the Cuban Treaty 
through the House. It makes no difference what 
the recompense was ; whether it Avas the mere hope 
of being scratched on the back by some portion of 
the public for having done Avliat the Importing 
Trust press might call a magnificent act; Avhether 
it Avas a certain prestige Avhich Avould help some 
later scheme; or Avhether it Avas a bribe in dollars 
or doughnuts. The object for Avhich this extraordi- 
nary usurpation of the poAvers of Congress was 
effected does not affect the fact that in this matter 
Ave Americans Avere ruled by an unscrupulous Czar 
and Avere not faithfully served by a constitutional 
President, Avho in theory at least, is the mere ser- 
A^ant of the people. As Ave have hinted, one power- 
ful instrument employed by him to destroy Con- 
gress as tlie deliberative body Avhich the Constitu- 
tion intends it to l)e, is the Press. We quote from 
an article in Harper's Weekly of September 28, 
1907, Avritten by Mr. J. J. Dickinson, the ex-member 
""uckoos" b'ofore alluded. to, 



395 

**A multifarious host of the phenomena of Theodore 
Roosevelt, man and President, have "been exploited and 
heralded to the uttermost parts of the earth. The one 
manifestation of him which is more potent and character- 
istic than any of the rest has never heen connectedly set 
forth to the world. He is the greatest publicity promoter 
among the sons of men to-day. Whether consciously or 
unconsciously, he has formulated it, framed it, and hung 
it upon the walls of his mental storehouse, the fact is that 
his guiding motto is this: 

. ."Let me have free access to the channels of publicity 
and I care not who makes my country's laws — or what the 
other fellow does." 

In writing of Roosevelt the Press-Agent no word of dis- 
respect is meant, for no feeling of disesteem is enter- 
tained. What shall be said will be based upon personal 
experience of about a year as assistant press-agent under 
the President, and close observation extending over the 
entire period of his occupancy of the White House. To 
be more specific and to give my simple narrative the vir- 
tue of frankness, I shall make a confession at the outset, 
to wit: For the greater part of a year I was what is 
known in Washington as one of the President's news- 
paper cuckoos. In the parlance of Washington, a cuckoo 
is a journalistic bird that is permitted to make its prin- 
cipal roost close to the Executive chamber and report for 
the delectation of his editor, for the enlightenment of the 
public and the accommodation of the President, such out- 
givings or internal operations of the Presidential mind as 
may suit the purpose or the whim of the nation's Chief 
Magistrate. The cuckoo, or assistant press-agent, has an 
extremely difficult and hazardous task. * * * 

Theodore Roosevelt secured his popularity through pub- 
licity. He has retained, extended, and strengthened it 
through publicity. As before stated, above all the men 
of his time he understands the power and necessity of 
publicity if one would achieve great results. * * * 

Rarely does the President communicate with more than 
one cuckoo at a time. * * * in his handling of his 
assistant press-agents he observes the Napoleonic method 
of not entrusting the full details of a campaign to any 
one of them. If the assistant press-agent be the repre- 
sentative of a Washington newspaper Mr. Roosevelt may 
impart to him a fuller mass of detail than to the repre- 
sentative of a newspaper elsewhere. The reason for this 
is obvious. The Washington newspaper is read by the 
members of Congress and other public men in all parts of 
the country. Thus, if it suits the President's purpose bet- 
ter to plant the seeds first in the minds of the people's 
servants preliminary to sowing the whole broad field, he 
will employ his Washington cuckoo to make primary an- 
nouncement, in a way somewhat cryptic to the popular in- 
telligence, but sufficiently significant TO THE MINDS OF 
THE EXPERIENCED POLITICIANS TO GIVE THEM 
WARNING OF WHAT THEY WOULD BETTER DO IF 
THEY DO NOT WANT TO GET HURT. If, thereafter, 
the politicians display either obtuseness or perversity, 



396 

the President then calls to his side the cuckoos of out of 
town newspapers and through them inaugurates a cam- 
paign of education that may be either nation-wide OR 
CONFINED TO THOSE SECTIONS OF THE COUNTRY 
WHERE HE HAS REASON TO BELIEVE THE PEO- 
PLE SHOULD BE INFORMED OF THE INDISPOSI- 
TION OF THEIR CHOSEN REPRESENTATIVES AT 
WASHINGTON TO BEND WILLINGLY TO THE EX- 
ECUTIVE PURPOSE. The best illustration of the em- 
ployment of this method that comes to mind is found in 
his propaganda of the Taft Presidential boom. It has 
been more than a year since through his Washington 
newspaper cuckoo — the same being none other than the 
contrite writer of these lines — Mr. Roosevelt began pub- 
licly to let the world know that he desired his able Secre- 
tary of War to succeed him in the White House. Faith- 
fully his desire in this matter was promulgated in a 
Washington newspaper so that every member of Congress 
who ran might read. In droves they ran when they did 
read — straight to the White House. There went Forak6r, 
almost bursting with suppressed wrath. Also followed 
Foraker's amiable colleague, Mr. Dick, his curiousity 
whetted to a razor-edge. Precious little satisfaction did 
either of them get on the main point, for the good and 
sufficient reason that it is the prerogative of the Execu- 
tive to envelop himself in vast, impenetrable silence when 
he so wishes on any topic under the sun. * * * as 
to why the President chose to impress first the Con- 
gressional mind with his wish to pass the succession on to 
Taft, that furnishes another interesting index of his 
character as a sagacious press-agent. It was the skir- 
mish fire in his line of battle to develop the location and 
strength of the enemy — "the other fellow." It brought 
some of the enemy out of the brush and drove others 
scurrying to the cover of stumps and dead logs. But he 
marked them as they moved. Within a few weeks he 
knew who and where the enemy was, and he proceeded 
accordingly to deal with him. He waited six months, or 
from May to October, before he set his out-of-town 
cuckoos to work openly on the Taft boom. Then in a jiffy 
the whole broad continent heard its reverberations. * * * 

He [Mr. Roosevelt at Jamestown] began his address 
thus: 

' ' It is, of course, a truism to say that no other body of 
our countrymen wield as extensive an influence as those 
who write for the daily press and for the other period- 
icals. ' ' 

In saying this, the President was not "jollying" the 
editors — though be it known that when he wants to be 
he is the most successful "jollier" between the two 
oceans. * * * He has invited to Washington and en- 
tertained at the White House a larger number of men who 
write than have any half dozen of his predecessors. The 
list of those he has thus singled out for distinction is a 
long one and growing longer." 



397 

Your Honors, ever since Mr. Roosevelt has been 
President, lie lias been notorious as a successful 
advertiser. We might call it by a no longer but 
an uglier name, if we said ^'conspirator.-' For in 
such meanderings we can see nothing but con- 
spiracy — a conspirac}^ between his ^'cuckoos" and 
himself to deceive the public into moods favorable 
to his schemes, by alloAving the public to think what 
they read is mere current news matter, culled by 
reporters from all sorts of sources and published 
in good faith, instead of Avliat it really is, an artful 
inise en scene to further the private purposes of 
the President. For, your Honors, the purpose is a 
private and personal purpose of Mr. Roosevelt. He 
is prostituting his high office to the ends of his 
private ambitions. 

Now, your Honors, if Mr. Roosevelt would thus 
stoop to low intrigue in such matters as Mr. Dick- 
inson has described, why should we not believe, 
that, for whatever motive might seem him good, he 
would do so with these wily plaintiffs? He con- 
spired with the newspapers to launch the Taft boom 
in the method best suited to his purposes; but 
why is it not possible that the launching of the 
Taft boom is but the rounding out of his conspira- 
tor's contract with these wily plaintiffs? Mr. Taft 
is already advertised widely as the instrument by 
which "revision," the end "most devoutly to be 
wished'' by these wily plaintiffs, is to be accom- 
plished. Our old lawyers' maxim, 3^our Honors, 
says', ^^Falsus in uno, falsus in oirDnihus/^ and if 
Mr. Roosevelt will so pkiinly conspire in one mat- 
ter, why not in another? 

As to measures which Mr. Roosevelt crushes 
through Congress by using the newspapers to 
"'warn them [Congressmen] what they would bet- 



398 

ter do if thej do not want to get hurt/' Mr. Roose- 
velt knows that his one single opinion, his one sin- 
gle stock of honesty, his one single cargo of patriot- 
ism, or his one single group of brain-cells in the 
chamber of intelligence, is not likely to be of a 
better quality or quantity than the corresponding 
article furnished as the residuum of debate and de- 
liberation after an exhaustive threshing out of the 
whole matter on the floor of Congress. He knows 
that one man's wisdom is not likely to exceed the 
boiled down sap and syrup of the wisdom of nearly 
five hundred men, all intelligent, all educated, at 
least in the great school of experience, and all sin- 
cerely patriotic, iind with regard to whom our 
next President slioud be, he know^s that the people 
of the United States, acting through their conven- 
tions, are more apt to choose' the very man they 
wish to represent the policies they w^ant, than any 
one individual citizen like Mr. Roosevelt, however 
pure in motive or high in patriotism he might be. 

Moreover, in all these matters, which properly 
come before Congress, Mr. Roosevelt knows that he 
is given the veto powder by the Constitution, and 
that no wicked legislation can smirch liim or harm 
the country, unless two-thirds of both Houses of 
Congress are all wicked at once. He knows he can 
save his reputation by the stroke of a pen ; and he 
knows the public would hold him guiltless even 
though it held Congress guilty. Ah, your Honors, 
we do not believe Mr. Roosevelt would want us to 
think he thought himself superior to the concensus 
of Congress or to our great people on any subject 
affecting their interests. Remembering that Mr. 
Roosevelt is an ambitious politician before he is 
a patriot, it is far more reasonable to suppose that 
ho is griuc|ii"»g some prjvnte cixe of his ambition in 



399 

his devious way«, than that he is really furthering 
or desiring to further the public good. And if that 
is so, your Honors, do not all signs point to his 
affiliation with these wily plaintiffs in their effort 
to rape the lock of our national savings bank? 

Considering the sinister use he constantly makes 
of it, the great power for evil which Mr. Roosevelt, 
through his Press-Agenc}^, has gained over public 
opinion, as described by Mr. Dickinson, is little 
short of appalling. It is easy to see how he gets and 
keeps this power. In a word, it is the old bread- 
and-butter argument. Public opinion conforms to 
the bread-and-butter necessities of the "cuckoos" at 
the capital. Upon its flavor and smack hangs the 
grub of the reporters. If they fill their papers with 
certain "copy'^ indicated by the President, and that 
copy gets in toothsome form to the public, the 
"cuckoos" get their grub. Otherwise they may get 
the sack — empty. Mr. Dickinson tells us how this 
is: 

*'He who is cuckoo to-day may find his place upon the 
perch taken to-morrow by another bird of fairer plumage; 
for the cuckoo wots not at what hour he is to be divested 
of his honors, his privileges, and immunities. It is as 
much the President's prerogative to choose his assistant 
press-agents as to select the members of his cabinet, and 
it is as incumbent upon the one as the other to step aside 
whenever the President indicates a desire for a change. 
And when the deposed cuckoo flutters with broken wing 
from his roost under the White House eyes he may find 
that his editor has separated him from his salary." 

Mr. Roosevelt is the Mrs. Eddy of superlative 
politics, and if 3^ou are a "cuckoo" and fail to pro- 
duce in your home paper at the psychological mo- 
ment the exact shading of Mr. Roosevelt's thoughts 
and aspirations, you are evidently under the domin- 
ion of malicious animal magnetism and "your editor 
may separate you from your salary;" and all in 



400 

the uaiue of the dear people ! Should any man re- 
port his own opinion, or deviate in any material 
way from the exact line laid down by Mr. Roosevelt, 
the headsman winks for the unfortunate in the 
near distance. When one reflects on the thought- 
lessness of the average reader and the fact that 
nine out of ten never rise above their newspaper, 
the self-effacement of Congress before the Roose- 
veltian frenzy is not hard to explain ; and one can- 
not help asking himself the question whether or 
not our people after all are not of monarchical 
pattern. Dearly do they love a one-man power. It 
suits their hero-worshiping mood, and — their lazi- 
ness. So, under Mr. Roosevelt's careful leading 
of his "cuckoo'^ flock with their seductive messages' 
to the dear public, the most solemn and oracular 
deliverances of our newspaper sancta sanctortun 
may be only the graphophonic repetitions of the 
grand things poured into the "cuckoo's" ear at the 
White House; and yet, from the indolence of the 
public and its willingness to swallow political pab- 
ulum from popular people without a wink, such 
effusions, the adroit suggestions of personal ambi- 
tion, are sure to determine public opinion. For in- 
stance, listen to this from the Pittsburgh Leader, 
commenting upon the profits of the Standard Oil 
Company, as divulged by the report of Mr. Herbert 
Knox Smith, of the Bureau of Corporations : 

** 'Profits' and 'earnings' are wrong words to use. 
Loot or plunder would be better. * * * 

"It is not a question of water or fictitious capitaliza- 
tion with this company; it is simply a matter of down- 
right robbery." 

Your Honors, Mv. Roosevelt is directly responsi- 
ble for these atrocious words. He has shown as 
little regard or as little scruple for sacred property 



401 

rights as it is possible to imagine; and here is the 
echo of his cuckoo press! Your Honors, the only 
"loot'' and "plunder/' the only "downright rob- 
bery" in sight is being perpetrated by Mr. Koosevelt 
and his cringing newspaper followers and cuckoos 
against the reputations of people who, at any rate, 
earn their living in faithful and hard work out- 
side of politics. This paper was simply trying 
to out-Herod Herod himself in its push for im- 
perial favor; and the result is this hoarse-throated 
anarchy, this clarion call to the jail-birds and slum- 
gudgeons to rally for the plucking of this corpora- 
tion against which no charge can be brought other 
than the charge of a wise, far-sighted, sagacious, 
and economical management of its business and a 
solution of problems of production and distribu- 
tion which have brought their no more than merely 
just reward. This Kooseveltian obsession does not 
seem to have spared such a high-class newspaper 
as the Philadelphia Press, which says, in connec- 
tion with the same political outrage, the rape of 
the profit sheets of the Standard Oil Company and 
their malicious exhibition, with anarchistic com- 
ment to the public : 

"When a corporation handles 90 per cent, of a ne- 
cessity of life, as petroleum and its products are, its 
operations have no right to he secret. * * * nq man 
can be trusted with the power in secret over the price of 
a commodity necessary to all." 

Your Honors, such talk as this is pure sedition, 
in view of the fact that the law gives every person 
or corporation the right to buy as much property 
as it pleases, keep it as long at is pleases, and sell 
it when it pleases, at any price it is willing to 
take and the buyer is willing to give, rather than 
go without the property. There is absolutely not 



402 

a line of law anywhere fixing a limit to the acquire- 
ment, as objects of trade, of the ^'necessities of 
life;'^ and what power but that of the people 
through constitutional amendment can put the ban 
of outlawry on him who controls '^90 per cent, of 
a necessity of life?'' And in the meantime how 
can such papers as the Philadelphia Press lend 
themselves so far to anarchy as to say, ''No man 
can be trusted with the power in secret over the 
price of a commodity necessary to all?" Why do 
their Solons nod and entrust their columns to the 
scribbling of callow sophomores? The law does 
not limit rights of property in "commodities nec- 
essary to all;" and until it does, and does it so 
distinctly that every man will know just where he's 
at and what his rights are, all harangues of this 
nature are an invitation for each fellow to judge 
for himself whether his neighbor's property is "a 
commodity necessary to all," and so common prop- 
erty, and, in regard to stealing from the "malefac- 
tor of great wealth," to practice any form of casu- 
istry which his ingenuity may furnish. Thus does 
the dread form of anarchy loom up in the lurid 
light of Mr. Eoosevelt's fulmination against our 
client, American Production ; and from that source 
these wily plaintiffs draw their hope of soon crack- 
ing our savings-bank safe again. 

Bearing in mind the fact that everything rela- 
tive to the President's movements, so anxiously 
sought after by the press, must come only through 
the cuckoo-chorus, and so with substantial direct- 
ness from Mr. Eoosevelt himself, a curious bit of 
sagacious contrivance just now occurs to us. You 
will remember, your Honors, how badly Vice-Presi- 
dent Fairbanks fared at the hands of the press, 
with regard to the "cocktail" episode at his house 



403 

iu ludiauapolis; witk what persistency it was kept 
going the rounds of the press under one form or 
another and never let die; how the Methodists of 
Indiana were kept stirred up about it; and how a 
certain bishop was reported to have said that it was 
Mr. Eoosevelt himself who ordered the cocktails 
for Mr. Fairbanks' reception, a report which was 
afterwards denied ; and how at last the Methodists 
of Indiana were alleged to have declined to send Mr. 
Fairbanks as a delegate to the Baltimore confer- 
ence because he had served cocktails at his house 
on the occasion in question. But did you observe 
in the press, only the day or so after Mr. Fairbanks 
was turned down as a delegate, as before noted, the 
following item in the daily papers? 

''The President will ride on the boat Mississippi. The 
great steamboat will be a literal floating WATER WA- 
GON, for not a drop of liquor will be allowed on board. ' ' 

And a day or so later did you remark this item in 
your daily paper : 

"NO COCKTAILS FOR THE PRESIDENT. Sherry 
will be the strongest drink at the St. Louis luncheon" — 

following with the details of how, in spite of the 
fact that "a host of Governors, including the Gov- 
ernor of Kentucky would be present,'^ ^^Bole" was 
ordered ^^to cut out the cocktails?" 

And a week or so afterwards, did you observe this 
in a New York paper : 

"Stamboul, La., Oct. 7.— Late this afternoon the Presi- 
dent had failed to get a bear. 

"A courier came into Stamboul this evening from the 
camp and reported that the President had not returned. 
The supposition therefore was that he had not been suc- 
cessful, as the game would have been brought into camp 
if he had killed anything. It is expected that he will 
remain in the thickets until dark. He carried a noon 
lunch and a bottle of water." 



404 

Abstemious austerity to burn ! 

And but little later the papers Avere hastening 
to tell the country that Mr. Taft, at Manila, would 
tolerate no liquors at his reception. 

And under date of Nov. 4, 1907, it was piped from 
St. Louis that 

"President Roosevelt is greatly pleased with the State 
wide prohibition feature of the Oklahoma Constitution 
and that it will constitute one of the strongest reasons for 
his approving the document." 

Oh, your Honors, in view of our knowledge of 
this ^'cuckoo" chorus in the White House, is' not all 
this cold-water nonsense sickening? Does not it 
look like a Koosevelt bid for the Prohibition vote? 
Isn't it just a cut and dried program throughout 
of this manufacturer of public sentiment? First, 
we have poor Mr. Fairbanks pilloried for counte- 
nancing cocktails. Then we have Mr. Koosevelt's 
cold-water virtues rung in by contrast with a fee- 
ble echo of "me too" from Mr. Taft. Then, at the 
present writing, Ave have Mr. Roosevelt again made 
illustrious by his prohibition tastes. Walk up, 
gentlemen of the Convention, whether you choose 
Roosevelt or Taft, you may be sure of the cold- 
water vote ! 

Not only in the management of his press-agency 
has Mr. Roosevelt shown his natural bias to cap- 
ture public opinion in questionable ways and to 
use as a Big Stick power placed in his hands ex- 
clusively for a different purpose. The Constitution 
did not intend that any President should use his 
appointing power practically to snuff out Congres- 
sional opinion; nor did it intend that what is 
known as its "commerce clause" should be used as 
a leverage to hoist any politician into meteoric pop- 
ularity. The Constitution gave Congress power "To 



405 

regulate commerce with foreigu uatious, and among 
the several States, and with the Indian tribes;" and 
it meant that the power of regulating commerce 
"among the several States'' should be of exactly the 
same nature as that given to Congress with regard 
to "foreign nations" and "the Indian tribes." 
It meant merely that Congress might take note of 
the physical character of the objects of such com- 
merce; whether these objects should be exchanged 
at all; or, if exchanged, whether they should un- 
dergo inspection as to their character. There never 
could have been any intention to give Congress 
power to help a politician wring arbitrary tribute 
from corporations within either of the States. The 
"regulation" was for the purpose of giving Con- 
gress power to provide for sanitary and law-observ- 
ing-conditions in the goods themselves. But Mr. 
Eoosevelt notoriousl}^ construes this power "to reg- 
ulate commerce * * * * among the several 
States" in the same manner that he construes his 
appointing power, viz., as a Big Stick wherewith 
to club into quietness any one who does not bend 
to his will in seeking some private and personal 
end. For example, evidently for the purpose of 
rousing the ignorant to a frenzy of admiration, he 
desires to be able to get at the private accounts of 
a corporation in order that he may show^ up its 
profits and point to it as a "cormorant" and as "a 
malefactor of great wealth" and thus make himself 
"solid" with the "peepul." And accordingly, 
through his officers and servants, he commands the 
corporation to produce its books and papers in 
court at a certain time and thereat and thereupon 
to defend itself against indictment under the Sher- 
man Law as a combination in restraint of trade. 



406 

Now, your Honors, under the Constitution, Fourth 
Amendment, 

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, 
houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches 
and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrant shall 
issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or af- 
firmation, AND PARTICULARLY DESCRIBING THE 
PLACE TO BE SEARCHED, AND THE PERSONS OR 
THINGS TO BE SEIZED;"— 

and under this constitutional aegis any corpora- 
tion, insisting upon its strict letter, could raise 
a question which would defeat the power thus 
usurped for the blackmailing of corporations; but 
if it should simply insist upon its rights, Mr. Eoose- 
velt, using the Big Stick in the "commerce clause,'' 
would shut off from interstate commerce the goods 
of such a corporation, perhaps to its ruin. That is, 
unless a corporation will pay either in cash or pop- 
ularity, tribute to an unscrupulous politician, it 
cau be destroyed by this false and wicked construc- 
tion of a constitutional clause which never meant 
to give Congress jurisdiction over the person of a 
State corporation, but merely over its products and 
then only when the subject of interstate commerce, 
and by general legislation affecting in the sa/me 
manner all similar products. 

For our part, we do not see why the interstate- 
commerce clause of the Constitution cannot be 
made to authorize inquisitions into the private af- 
fairs of individuals as well as those of "trusts," 
otherwise corporations. For, under that clause. 
Congress has power "to regulate commerce among 
the several States,'' and so far as appears from the 
constitutional language, the word "commerce" is 
quite unlimited in its application. It seems to us, 
therefore, that if, by the threat of preventing a 
corporation from doing interstate business, that 



407 

coi'poration cau be compelled to show up its 
profits and thus furnish ammunition to the francs- 
tireurs of our political mob, the same threat could 
compel individuals to do likewise; and thus the 
way could be opened to unlimited blackmail and to 
all the deviltry from which we supposed we had 
escaped by adopting a Constitution defining our 
rights. We repeat, sauce for the goose is sauce 
for the gander; the same compulsion applied to the 
corporation can be applied to the individual. If 
the regulation of interstate commerce is not ex- 
clusively in rem where corporations are involved, 
it need not be where individuals, are involved. If 
in determining whether certain goods made by a 
corporation shall be admitted to interstate com- 
merce, you need not confine yourself to the goods 
themselves, and their effect upon the happiness of 
users; but, ignoring the goods entirely as a physi- 
cal proposition, you can go farther back and in- 
quire who produced the goods and let their rights 
in interstate commerce depend upon the moral char- 
acter of their producer alone as that character 
seems to you, there seems no good reason why the 
goods of an individual also should not be put to 
the same test and, as to their interstate rights, 
s'tand or fall according as their maker was white 
or colored, Jew or Gentile. Where would this 
thing end, your Honors, if Mr. Koosevelt's position 
were right? 

In thus manufacturing popularity for future use 
in line with his private ambitions, Mr. Koosevelt 
resembles a messenger boy, who, sent to deliver a 
package to some one, should hold the package as 
his own property. The President is merely the 
messenger of the people. He is sent with a pack- 
age of appointments to serve the people's interests 



408 

and not his own p-ersonal ambitions; but he appro- 
priates this commission as a means of disciplining 
Congressmen who do not vote for a Cuban Treaty, 
a measure which he imagines will add to his per- 
sonal popularity. Or, he is the messenger of the 
people under the interstate-commerce clause of the 
Constitution, to regulate such commerce for the 
purpose of governmental revenue, to prevent dis- 
putes between States, or for some other common 
purpose, note being taken of the fact that all such 
regulations were meant to be in rem and not in 
personam^ as our legal expression has it; and yet 
the President twists this power into a Big Stick 
to hammer a corporation into acquiesence in a bar- 
barous inquisition of its books, for no other appar- 
ent object than to continue his shadow dance for 
popularity among thoughtless people; unless it 
might be to frighten and discourage our client, 
American Production, for the benefit of these wily 
plaintiffs. 

An illustration of this latter usurpation of power 
is furnished by the prosecution, or, more properly, 
the persecution of the Standard Oil Company. 
There is no doubt whatever that this suit was un- 
dertaken at the special instance of Mr. Eoosevelt 
and as a spectacular fulfilment of his fulminatory 
menace against "malefactors of great wealth." Con- 
sidered as a corporation having an army of inno- 
cent employees and another army of as innocent 
stockholders, the only offence of which this com- 
pany had been guilty w^as that of being perhaps 
the greatest in this country. This feature of size 
however, Avas exactly A\iiat attracted Mr. Roose- 
velt's attention. In the decalogue of the President 
it is strictly forbidden to be either great or wealthy 
unless as a tributory to the Prc^sident. Now, by 



409 

virtue of using the interstate-commerce clause of 
the Constitution as a Big Stick, this corporation 
was compelled to turn its books over to Mr. Roose- 
velt's special agent for the prosecution and this spe- 
cial agent hastened to lay before the country a 
statement of the profit-account of the pilloried cor- 
poration, for no other purpose in the Avorld than 
to excite the enviousness, covetousness, and primi- 
tive malice of those of us whose brain-cells have 
an arrangement someAvhat like those of highw^ay 
robbers; for highAvay robbers also operate against 
others because others have made money which the 
^'road agents'' want. But highway robbers, your 
Honors, are not so shalloAv as to call ^illegitimate 
profits" of "malefactors of great Avealth" the money 
they are reaching for. Because they s'eem to know 
if others don't, that neither our Constitution nor 
our laws fix a point beyond which ma}^ not go 
profits made by selling your oavu property at the 
price at which the buyer also sees a profit in it for 
him. As far as we are concerned, for the robust 
frankness of the highwa^anan, who, when he holds 
up and robs a rich man, calls it just a plain hold- 
up, and does not soil his soul with hypocrisy, we 
have a greater respect than for the sneaks and 
snivelers, whether in the pulpit, on the college lec- 
ture platform, or in the editorial or the presiden- 
tial chair, who salve their consciences and fan the 
fire in their itching palms with the explanation 
that they purpose to appropriate to themselves 
merely the "illegitimate profits" of "malefactors of 
great Avealth ;" although, after all, the highwayman 
and these latter gentry are common criminals on 
the same job. 

In his attacks upon wealth as such, there is no 
calculating: the damano done bv ^Ir. Koosevelt to 



410 - 

the every-day morals of hundreds of thousands of 
our intellectual Aveaklings. It is impossible to de-, 
fend himi on the ground that it is only wealth dis- 
honestly gotten against which he launches his 
Olympian lightning. His talk about inheritance 
and income taxes, his deliverances as to "swollen 
fortunes'' and their proper limitation, and his ma- 
licious and mischievous exhibition to the country, 
not of any wrong-doing, for not the slightest wrong- 
doing has yet been shown, but of the alleged enor- 
mous profits of the Standard Oil Company, prove 
that, in his venemous persecution of this great com- 
pany, it is not punishment for the violation of any 
law which he aims at, but the destruction of our 
client, American Production, and, as we believe, in 
the interest of these wily plaintiffs, whose ally we 
solemnly aver him to be; and in obedience to the 
inspiration, of whatver kind, which he receives 
from these wily plaintiffs, he fans to white-heat 
flame among our countrymen all the narrow, mali- 
cious, and vicious prejudices, all the enviousness 
and covetousness of which simple souls are capa- 
ble, and labors to stampede them to his assistance 
in overwhelming our client, American Production, 
by a "revision" of the dike or an approval of the 
thrice-infamous German Agreement. Your Honors, 
in reviewing all the facts that dove-tail into each 
other so closely in this combined assault of these 
wily plaintiffs and of Mr. Eoosevelt upon Ameri- 
can Production, would we not be more than justi- 
fic^d in supposing something deeper than a tacit 
conspiracy between them to this common end? 
What more effective instrument could these wily 
plaintiffs have selected for their purpose than Mr. 
Roosevelt? What action more favorable to these 
wily plaintiffs couhl Mr, Koosev<"lt have taken than 



411 

to discredit American Production by characterizing 
its most powerful representatives as "malefactors 
of great wealth'^ and by showing to the public the 
profits of our greatest corporations and so anger- 
ing the howling rabble against the rival of these 
wily plaintiffs in our market, American Produc- 
tion? And what action could Mr. Roosevelt have 
taken which more clearly gave the true key to all 
his violence against American Production than his 
part in the German Agreement? Does it not look, 
your Honors, as if, bound to these wily plaintiffs 
by invisible but unbreakable ties, committed hea'i't 
and soul to all their vicious purposes, working with 
all his power to put the people iu a mood to give 
the wily plaintiffs what they asked, the key to our 
savings bank, yet fearing the effect of an open alli- 
ance with these wily plaintiffs in their campaign 
for "revision," upon his ambition for future favors 
from his own political party, he saw and used the 
Sternburg route to dike-destruction, which would 
do everything possible to be done by tariff "revi- 
sion," and yet leave him still the plausible cham- 
pion of Protection? 

But in spite of all his open and secret faults, his 
sins of omission and commission, outrages against 
decent conservatism and insults to the common 
sense and often the consciences of his humble sub- 
jects there are many, camp-followers and others, 
who see in Mr. Roosevelt the fulfillment of the ages 
for wisdom and integrity. But we cannot reconcile 
his sayino^s and doings with common rationality, to 
say nothing about reconciling them with the notion 
that he is the wise of all the wise. 

Particularly in his presto-changing of all our 
unrighteousness to righteousness, our Chief Ma- 
gician seems to forget, or rather he explicitly 



412 

scorns our Antinian bonds to Mother Earth. Bus- 
iness, industry, every road from the bakery to our 
poor stomachs, must rather "go to the wall" than 
that "My Policies" shall deviate one jot or tittle 
from their ordained path.* And yet, if thou starv- 
est out of commission our stomachs, O Great Ma- 
gician, wherewith shall we assimilate thy Manna? 
We don't think this method of attacking unright- 
eousness shows wisdom. 

But as to integrity, the case is just as bad; for 
Mr. Roosevelt, according to his own definition, is 
the greatest "Malefactor of Great Wealth" in the 
world. Because he is the most powerful potentate 
in the world, merely by virtue of his hold on pub- 
lic opinion here, no matter by what inside "deal," 
by what conspiring with poor bread-winning cuck- 
oos of the press, or by what effacement of Con- 
gressmen, who have learned "what they would bet- 
ter do if they do not want to get hurt." Now, your 
Honors, if wealth is power, as sure as we live, 
power is wealth. Therefore, Mr. Roosevelt is the 
wealthiest man on earth. Then, is the frightening 
of the country into a panic a benefaction or a male- 
faction? We think you will agree that it is "evil 
doing" rather than "well doing." Well, that is a 
malefaction and the fellow who does it is a male- 
factor. And we submit that we have proved our 
statement. 

Then, again, as to this head of integrity, we 
are sorely under stress for another reason. Mr. 



* Mr. Roosevelt, in his Keokuk speech, used this language: 
** At intervals during the last few months the appeal has been 
made to m ^ not to enforce the law against certain wrongdoers 
of great wealth, because to do so would interfere with the 
business prosperity of the country. -•' ^' ^- In each case 
the answer must be that * * '^- if righteousness con- 
flicts with the fancied needs of business, then the latter must go 
to the wall." 



Roosevelt calls some of us "Malefactors of Great 
Wealth" and says we are "trusts" of abhorrent de- 
vices. But, through his press-agency and the inci- 
dental powers of his office unlawfully used, Mr. 
Roosevelt has "cornered" public opinion just the 
same as some of us wicked ones corner beef, to- 
bacco, paper, kerosene oil, steel, cotton, and the 
like. But public opinion is just as much a neces- 
sary of business life as wheat is of domestic life; 
and yet Mr. Roosevelt seems to hold about our 
whole crop in the hollow of his hand and he is 
squeezing the rest of us up to nominating him for 
a third term as the price at which he holds it. In 
other words, he is i\ great public opinion "trust." 
He cornered it by just as dark Avays as we ever 
cornered wheat or anything else. And he is not 
going to let go his' grip until he gets his price. Ac- 
cording to Mr. Roosevelt this being a great big 
"trust" with a swollen fortune, "exacting" and "ex- 
torting" aw^ful things of the dear public, is very, 
very wrong; and we think he convicts himself of 
being at any rate an active partner in "The Wicked- 
est Trust in the World." 

Now along back a Avays we read you a speech 
from a New Haven gentleman who spoke right out 
in meeting about Mr. Roosevelt; and to show that 
he is not the only one who is crawling out from 
under the general intimidation which Mr. Roosevelt 
holds over the country, we will read you a letter 
printed in the New York Sun on the morning of 
November 14, 1907, as follows : 



414 

MR. ROOSEVELT. 



An Estimate of His Character and a Prayer for His 
Conduct. 

To the Editor of The Sun — Sir: The business com- 
munity revolts against inquisitorial investigations in sup- 
port of "My Policies," however strenuous and lofty, in- 
stituted by Mr. Roosevelt and prosecuted by his lieuten- 
ants in the interest of or in vindication of them, rather 
than of the "square deals" which he often misinterprets. 
His best friends, those who personally have known him 
from his youth, watched his career with pride and sat- 
isfaction and have dared to advise him, agree that he is 
absolutely honest but unwise, impulsive, shrewd, obstinate 
and impatient of contradiction. Others who have come 
into personal contact with him assert that he is deaf to 
argument, many times unreasonable, self-opinioned, re- 
sorting to invective with the ingenious skill of a lit- 
terateur in clothing words with novel applications, in- 
venting new epithets and misapplying old ones. 

In his public utterances he deals in sounding phrases 
which stimulate the passions of the popular majority 
against the well-to-do classes. He does not so much look 
forward to remedies as backward to faults and punish- 
ments for errors of the past. No admirer of his person- 
ality ever thought him a prudent statesman or a calm, ju- 
dicious interpreter of the law. Dogmatic in his impulsive 
judgments, dictatorial to courts, juries, legislature and 
conventions, fond of oratory and popular applause, he 
seems always to seek the glare of the limelight on the 
public stage as well as in the retirement — if he ever re- 
tires — of his home, where he submits to the camera and 
has portrayed his skill as a horseman, a woodsman, a 
hunter of beasts and birds and, as he is, a most excellent 
father of a large family! 

He is picturesque as a soldier in rough rider costume, 
as a horseman leaping fences, a hunter following the 
hounds, chasing lions and bears; in all manly sports 
he is a spectacular example. 

His courage no one doubts; in the jfield, council cham- 
ber or on the platform he is ever the principal figure, 
bold, emphatic, full of violent gesture, irrepressible, at- 
tractive to the multitude — to the thoughtful unsafe! He 
brooks no interference, seeks no advice, sends his chief 
councillors abroad at critical times, surrounds himself 
only by councils of young men who listen and are either 
silent or meekly acquiesce in his determinations, or whose 
murmurings of dissent are whispers or asides, of no 
weight with him or the public. Indeed, he assumes to be 
and is the "entire show." Those who differ from him 
or do not approve all his methods he promptly classes 
as "his enemies." 

It is in a measure unjust to Mr. Roosevelt to assert 
that he is the unique cause of it all; but it is undeniable 



415 

that he has been and is an important factor in the grave 
concern which pervades all honest business enterprises 
and industries from one end of the country to the other. 
He started the fire which has reached the condition of 
conflagration; has added fuel to the flames, instead of 
trying to confine them to proper limits, by reiterated 
denunciations and unnecessary threats. 

Mr. Roosevelt may believe honestly that our national, 
commercial and domestic sins can be expiated only 
through suffering and distress and that he is an apostle 
who is only fulfilling a mission. Will not a tired people 
prefer more moderation and less absolutism for a few 
years and cry out for rest? He is credited with being 
instrumental in giving peace to warring nations of the 
Old World; why should he stir up dissensions at home? 
A pacificator builds a more enduring monument than an 
agitator. Of the former we have too few, of the latter 
too many. But a President-Agitator, however sincere, is 
dangerous to every interest, great or small, to every 
citizen, rich or poor. The dinner pail was full when he 
came into power; will the owners of empty ones rise up 
and accuse him for the emptiness when he appeals to 
them again? That is the question his weU wishers are 
hoping he will, if possible, consider calmly, even though 
he disregards the innocent victims of his crusade against 
the comparatively few "wealthy malefactors." 

For the moment Mr. Roosevelt is wisely silent, perhaps 
astounded at the weight given his oratorical effusions at 
home and abroad, and alarmed at their effect upon honest 
enterprise and the strength they add to the schemes of 
the turbulent dissatisfied or unruly elements of our com- 
plex society. We cannot expect him to retract or recede 
from ' ' My Policies, ' ' but beg that he will not indulge in 
renewed and unnecessary explanations of them. We fuVLy 
understand him and them. That for a time he may keep 
on the conservative side of silence and permit the country 
to work out its own salvation through its courts and con- 
stitutional methods, uninfluenced by his forcible rhetoric, 
ex parte judgments and the opinions of youthful, inex- 
perienced detective commissioners, is now the prayer of 
the whole country. 

AN ADMIRER OP MR. ROOSEVELT. 

New York, November 13. 

Now, your Honors, we submit that this is a fair 
and just estimate of Mr. Roosevelt; and that all 
those who have heads to think, after seeing him 
illuminate the nation for the better part of 
eight years, agree with this Avriter that he is "atr 
tractive to the multitude — to the thoughtful un- 
safe;" and we cannot but wonder why it is possi- 
ble that this sober nation, after all it has suffered, 



416 

can listen to third term tallv without downright 
sickness at the stomach. Why, vonr Honors, the 
woods are full of crooked sticks! Wliy should we 
take just this one, rather than ten thousand others 
that, though not exactly straight, are a good deal 
more straight than the one we are leaning on? We 
think the only thing which explains this" is the grij) 
the President has on Congressmen through his Big 
Stick and his press-agency. They are all afraid 
of him. At heart none of them loves him. 

But, your Honors, why choose a crooked stick at 
all? If the woods are full of crooked sticks, they 
are also full of straight ones. It is not too much 
to say that we have at least a thousand bank presi- 
dents in this country, so broad, so intelligent, so 
true, and so discreet that either of them would 
make the most practical president in the world. 
The same thing could be said of our great captains 
of industry; and of our merchant princes, who have 
not been corrupted by foreign trade and the finding 
of treasures in foreign markets instead of our own 
market here. 

And yet the politicians are saying, "Mr. Eoose- 
velt can have the delegation from my State if he 
wants it. If he does not, Mr. Taft is our second 
choice.'' Why, your Honors, these people are the 
chattels of the Eoosevelt administration. When 
they speak, it is a graphophone running off a Eoose- 
velt record. 

How shrewdly, your Honors, has Mr. Eooseveft 
joined his labors for these wily plaintiffs with la- 
bors for himself! With the passage of time, your 
Honors, this amazing alliance between business and 
politics will be apparent. When the glint and the 
gleam, the sparkle and twinkle, the sizzle and fiz- 
zle, the swish and the boom, have died away and 



417 

left only bitter smoke behind; when the glamour 
has turned to gloaming; when the glory and the 
glare have faded to twilight stars, the hour for 
thought will have come, and the American people 
will learn the truth of the saga, ^Tersistent adver- 
tising pays;'' and that "persistent advertising'' 
markets quack men as well as quack medicines. 
They will then remember that we have had Presi- 
dents who have lived and left their foot-prints on 
the sands of time, without the agony of great pub- 
licity; who "seen their duty and done it" with their 
right hand without tattling to their left. They will 
remember that all branches of our Government as 
well as our private business have, in the main, al- 
ways been run by honest men; and they will come 
to know once more that honesty is a condition of 
living at all, and that people are as honest or as 
dishonest as their necessities, and that in Govern- 
ment as w^ell as in private life, their necessities 
make the vast majority of men and women honest. 
They will recollect, when the spell has passed, that 
honesty is no curio ; that Mr. Roosevelt did not dis- 
cover it, and that if it is new to him, it is no nov- 
elty to the rest of the w^orld. They will recollect 
that other Presidents, without sounding the bugle 
horn for the advance, thought it a matter of course 
to clean house quietly all the time; and if the ex- 
ception to the rule of honesty was perchance dis- 
covered and dishonesty in the Government or in 
the act of some individual or corporation answer- 
able to national law was found to rear its horrid 
head, without any fury or fireworks, to let the calm 
and non-flamboyant law take its orderly course. 
There was no advertisement; no heroics; no red 
fire. And then they will wonder how so simple 
and natural a thing as the honest running down of 



418 

dishouesty could have ever been used for an adver- 
tising hullaballoo. Tlie^- Avill be ashamed that they 
ever should have seen morality in pyrotechnics. 
And they will be struck by the contrast between 
the ways of the sincere and single-hearted patriot 
and other ways that they have noted; between the 
smooth and noiseless apprehension of "wrong-do- 
ers" and their proper punishment, whether they be 
rich or poor, and the piff, bang, boom I with which 
dishonesty is laid low when the hearts of the faith- 
ful need a new firing in fealty. And then will the 
sobered second thought of the people think of this 

MISE EN SCfiNE. 

Act I. Store of advertising matter running 
low. Great lack of a new sensation. The sum- 
moning of the "cuckoos." Conference of the only 
just. Stage in sombre twilight — Gotterdam- 
erung! The awful hero approaches in all the 
panoply of war, rough-riding the yieldless shards. 
Stage sinks into the blackness of darkness. 
Thunder in the distance. Flashes of oncoming 
lightning. Away off somcAvhere a horn blows. 

Act II. Stage brightens. Scent of dishonesty 
thought to be found, while angels weep in the 
flies. Cornet prelude. Rising animation. 
Eose-colored calcium. Hope. 

Act III. Combat deepens. The brave rush on. 
Dishonesty seen in headlong flight for the tall 
timber. Hounds in full cry. Rough Riders' 
trampling the grass everywhere. Stage in white- 
light illumination. Trombone chorus. Great 
expectations. 

Act IV. Battle rages. Victory perches, and 
un])erclH\s and reporclies. Dislionesty brouglit 



419 

to bay jiLSt this side of the tall timber. Delight 
of the hounds. Transports of the Kough Kiders. 
Angels in flies laugh outright. Grand pell-mell 
scrimmage. Great victory of The-Thousand-to- 
One-Rough-Eiding-Brigade. Dishonesty given the 
coup de grace, and Teddy the brush. Orchestra 
thunders. 

Act V. Grand looking-glass scene. Rough 
Riders all admire themselves. More clouds and 
darkness. Thunder rolls. Lightning forks 
through the foreground. More awful majesty of 
hero. Foodle-foodle of all the bass horns. A 
million bass drums boom, boom, bum in earth- 
quaking unison. Tom-toms crash. Cornets spit 
crackling fire. Majesty of law vindicated. Daz- 
zling triumph. Grand illumination in blood red. 
Ready Teddy ready for another stumping tour. 
The cuckoo chorus* diminuendo to curtain. 



BEFORE THE CURTAIN. 

The Poet: The glimmer, the glint and the 
gleam. The twinkle and crinkle. The shimmer 
and shiver and shine. The glow and the glare 
and the glory. The red-fire, the white-fire, the 
blue-fire. The red and the Avhite and the blue. 
The bing, the bang and the boom !!!!!!!!! I I 

The Peepul: Oh! Oh! ! Oh! ! O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o 

!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

O Prince of Advertisers, with thy royal flush, 
take the pot! Thou scoopest the deck! Compared 
with thy shining talent, that of him who paints 
"SAPOLIO" on Niagara's rainbow, or on tlie face 
of the silver moon Avill be but a fire-flj^'s glow in 
the sun's full noonday glare ! 

For putting the matter this way, we may be 



420 

called by a shorter and uglier word. But^ never- 
theless, this is the way it seems to us. 

But he did a lot of good, didn't he? What good, 
your Honors? What good did he really try to do 
except for himself? 

He had a keen conscience, had he not? Ah, 
your Honors, conscience often gilds golden the 
blackest infamy. The burglar has conscience — to 
do his job thoroughly, to take the last coin from 
the till; the last spoon from the side-board. Con- 
science, subordinate to self-glory and combative- 
ness, is a hulking hypocrite. 

He was humane, was he not? Not so you would 
notice it ; not humane enough to keep his hunt from 
Louisiana swamps and his dogs from the dooryards 
of his four-footed fellow mortals; not humane 
enough to spare the aged and innocent Tyner; not 
humane enough to prevent the damning on thin sus- 
picion of a whole battalion of blacks; not humane 
enough not to jump on the offenseless and defense- 
less Jehu; not humane enough to hold his ruthless 
hands from private citizen Long; not humane 
enough not to use his powder to dismiss steamboat 
inspectors to injure and disgrace a Nicholls, whose 
innocence was protested by thirty eye-witnesses and 
w^hose only accuser was the President ; not humane 
enough to leave undone a single act which might 
swell his own glory from the leveling of his maga- 
zine rifle at the hides of Louisiana bears to the 
leveling of a German Agreement at the hearts and 
homes of hundreds of thousands of his fellow citi- 
zens. Humane, your Honors! Why, many a sav- 
age sachem is just as humane. The Emperor of 
Abyssinia is just as much so. Mr. Koosevelt spares 
neither man nor beast in his lust and riot for sen- 
sational satisfaction, whether it be urged by his bat- 



421 

tle-brain-eells or those which push a man towards 
vain-glory. He mows down like grass men who 
stand in his ^vaj. The industries of the nation have 
no warrant for living against his desire to be tick- 
led by the German Emperor. To sate his love of 
praise, and without a qualm of conscience or of 
sympathy, he crashes into the industrial structures 
which sustain the life of the people. He runs 
amuck with swinging bludgeon among the crowd 
of moneyed men upon whose shoulders our financial 
and industrial welfare rest, yelling with each mur- 
derous blow, ^'Malefactors of great wealth! Very 
rich wrong-doers !'' while values melt by the hun- 
dreds of millions like ice in a July sun and hun- 
dreds of thousands of small investors are despoiled 
of their all. He breathes from his fire-belching 
nostrils slaughter and threatenings of slaughter 
against all property rights, and rends the founda- 
tions of the nation's whole business life. And all 
in the name of righteousness ! Ay, your Honors, in 
the name of righteousness he scatters withering 
havoc like a pestilential blast and sounds the loud 
summons of his Eough-Kiding clans to the devo- 
tion of a holy war. All in the name of righteous- 
ness, your Honors! And is he righteous; and is 
his war a holy war? He is as righteous as any 
other fanatic, your Honors, who maketh his meat 
by righteousness; and his war is as holy as any 
other war w^aged to assemble a fanatical following. 
His war is at least as holy as those of the whirling 
dervishes and Mad Mullahs of the Orient — just so 
holy and no holier is the righteousness and the war 
of this whirling dervish, this Mad Mullah of the 
Occident. 

Oh, idol of the people, clay-wrought by the very 
mob which doth thee reverence! Oh, king of 



422 

liiasqueiadens ! Usthinks that oft behind thy mask, 
with the inextinguishable laughter of the demi- 
gods, thou chortlest softly to thyself, "Ah, indeed 
and indeed, what fools these mortals be !" 

[At this point in counsel's argument a group of 
cuckoos and Koosevelt Congressmen, perched on 
the back benches, hissed, groaned, and cried "What 
rot!" The Presiding Judge directed the court offi- 
cer to arrest the "wrong-doers,'' but counsel for de- 
fendant intervened in their behalf.] 

Defendant's Counsel: We trust, your Honors, 
that you will be lenient with these disturbers. They 
had to do it. The "cuckoos" Avould have fluttered 
from their White House perch with worse than 
broken wings ; and the Congressmen who hold their 
official leases from Mr. Roosevelt would have been 
dispossessed, had they not gone on record here as 
disapproving criticism of Mr. Roosevelt, profanely 
connecting him with these Avily plaintiffs. But, 
your Honors, we think they will be good now, if 
they remain. Having saved their respective records 
and necks, they will have no further occasion for 
disorder. 

The Presiding Judge : On the statement of coun- 
sel, the offenders may remain without arrest. But 
the disorder must not be repeated. Counsel will 
please proceed. 

Defendant's Counsel (Resuming) : Your Hon- 
ors, what "malefactor of great wealth" could do 
greater wrong to his country than has been done 
and is yet being done by Mr. Roosevelt? With his 
special appointees doing his will in pointing to the 
profits of great corporations as evidence of crime; 
with all this systematic persecution of those who 



423 

have acquired property, because of its being ac- 
quired, not by robbery, your Honor, but in the ways 
which have always been and still are counted as 
the usual and honorable ways of acquiring property 
and which are never questioned when employed by 
men who have not come under Mr, Koosevelt's con- 
demnation or who are so fortunate as to be consid- 
ered by him as "malefactors of little wealth ;'^ with 
his ready appeal to the public against "a conspiracy 
of rich men f and his unceasing stigma upon prop- 
erty as the mark and sign of depravity; with all 
this and Avith the constant clatter of weak minds 
in the newspaper world, denouncing as "robbery" 
all large profits no matter how honestly or in what 
orderly way acquired, what is to become of prop- 
erty rights in this country, and how is a body to 
know when he will be lauded as a "poor man" or 
pinched as a "malefactor of great wealth?" Is there 
any ear-mark, your Honors, by which property may 
be known as "legitinmte" or "illegitimate" and in 
the one case retained for one's own use and in the 
other abandoned to some politician's campaign 
fund? Have all our rules of conduct been changed, 
your Honors, and by the application of the Koose- 
velt rule are we all now but a den of thieves? 

Are we to suffer domicilary visitation by the tith- 
ing man of any political party that happens to be 
at the head of things? Must we make humble con- 
fession of all our doings in business, to let our 
blackmailing tormentor judge whether or not our 
profits have been "legitimate?" Are we to be 
mulcted in our property Avlienever the Chief Magis- 
trate has need of a little more public furor in order 
to carry him into a second term of office? Are we 
to be the goods and chattels of greatness in the 
White House? Oh, your Honors, it really seems 



424 • 

so, when judges can be appointed for the express 
purpose of finding us guilty any way; of refusing 
all testimony showing that we Avere ignorant of the 
facts alleged as our crime and that we did not 
know we were offending and had no intention of 
doing so; of shutting our mouths when we protest 
that we were only shipping goods at the same rate 
at which we had shipped them over three competing 
roads for more than a decade ; of refusing our proof 
that we had only been guilty of taking a railroad's 
word for the fact of the legality of its rate ; and, to 
crown all, of sending for all our books and figur- 
ing out our profits for a dozen years to determine 
whether we were of the size to be called guilty and 
if guilty of what size should be our punishment! 
Oh, your Honors, have these wily plaintiffs, our 
century-old parasites, who suck our blood and do 
nothing else but suck our blood, been so powerful 
at Washington that thej thus have the power of 
life and death over us all! Is American Produc- 
tion to be thus doomed and damned in behalf of 
these wily plaintiffs? And is this the land of ref- 
uge of the Puritans and the Pilgrims? Is this the 
place to which we fled from injustice, from domicil- 
iary visitations, from martyrdom for opinion's 
sake, the whipping-post, the pillory, the rack, the 
boiling oil, the gibbet and the stake! Is this the 
land of the free and the home of the brave! To 
this complexion has it come at last! Oh, Manes 
of Magna Charta! Oh, shades of the Declaration 
of Independence ! Oh, shape of the American Con- 
stitution ! How hath your one-time mighty fallen ! 



425 



XXXI 

THESE WILY PLAmTIFFS SHOULD BE CONSTITUTION- 
ALLY RESTRAINED FROM FURTHER PREYING UPON 
THE BUSINESS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. 

Your Honors', it has hitherto been a haphazard 
life our people have been living. Studiously have 
these Avily plaintiffs, through their great bureaus 
of information, our colleges, our editorial rooms, 
and our large publishing houses, cultivated among 
us the doctrine of Imssez faire, or "every man for 
himself and God help the hindmost." These sources 
of authority have waved off with grimaces of pain 
every suggestion that the profane hand of science 
should be laid upon our economic affairs and from 
the slip-shod chaos of our ideas should roll into 
definite form a plan whereby our national progress 
in the direction of universal happiness should be 
made as permanent and unreversible as the path 
of the sun in the sky. And in order to beat us in 
detail and make us forever the Arcadian dolts of 
their deceptions, sheep to be sheared, cows to be 
milked, geese to be plucked and turkies to be bled 
for their profit, these wily plaintiffs, the Import- 
ing Trust and the Exporting Trust, knowing that 
a house divided against itself cannot stand, have 
studiously tried to divide us; and have poured 
our ears full of economic superstitions exhaling 
such wraiths and bugaboos that our chief sensa- 
tion has been that of terror of each other, as if 
some of us were rich, and others poor, some capi- 
talists and others laborers, some producers and 
others consumers, some "the Governmeuit" and the 



420 

rest "the comiuou people;'' with each classes in- 
tei*ests antagouis'tic to those of each of the other 
classes. 

On the contraiy, your Honors, we know as we 
have before agreed, that in the sense that any given 
person can belong to but one of the classes' named 
and to that irrevocably, there are no classes what- 
ever in this country; and that nobody is rich or 
poor by comparing his wealth with that of others, 
but only by comparing what he really has with 
what he really needs. We know that all of us act- 
ive, business people are laborers, whether we labor 
in producing property or wages, or whether we 
labor in the transportation, distribution, and pres- 
ervation of property; that, in varying proportions, 
we all are capitalists, in muscle, mind, and money, 
and we know, your Honors', that we prosper and 
are gr-eatest and best in the direct ratio in which 
our wants are supplied by American Production; 
that in fact our progress and civilization are Ameri- 
can Production and wax and wane with that Pro- 
duction. For we know that in order that we may 
honestly acquire a mass of goods which will evenly 
fill our whole increasing measure of wants', we 
must have distributed to us a volume of employ- 
ment exactly equal to our volume of wants; for 
it is our employment Avliich earns the supplies 
A^iiich meet our necessities'; and we know that the 
uiore of this mass of supplies we produce our- 
selves, the less we vshall be compelled to beg, bor- 
row, or steal; and the less of it we produce our- 
selves, the more we shall be compelled to beg, bor- 
row or steal; and that when, at last, we become 
sufficiently civilized to make the volume of our 
employment exactly equal to the volume of pro- 
duction required to supply our needs, we shall have 



427 

become sufficiently civilized never to beg, borrow, 
or steal a cent's worth from anybody. 

And by a short examination, we have learned 
that the only condition upon which American Pro- 
duction can live is one that will relieve capital 
employed in this country from the dilemma where- 
in it must either be dissipated among the cheap 
nations of the earth, or must itself take time by 
the forelock and leave for some land where the 
index-figure of cost is' lower than ours; and we 
have drafted a law showing under what conditions 
capital must thus migrate or thus be dispersed 
to the strong boxes of competing producers. By 
a quick glance about us, we have learned that 
ours' is a cost-100 country and that the world out- 
side is a cost-20 country; and have realized that 
unl-ess we lay a firm hand upon our own affairs, 
we shall be, to the end of time, the easy victim of 
these wily plaintiffs and that by the exposure of 
our cost-100 market to a cos't-20 world, our wealth 
will be snatched away as often as we are weak 
enough to agree to such exposure by "tariff re- 
vision." Now, your Honors, why should not we 
act the part of rational beings? Why should not 
we, the real business men of America, the only ones 
whose interests are identical with those of the 
whole country, we, the wage-producers, the prop- 
erty-producers, and the adjunct-producers, form- 
ing but a single harmonious army under the ban- 
ner of American Production, fighting the battles 
of American Progress' and American Civilization 
aixainst a common enemy which ambushes us at 
pvory point, the enemy which cuts off our lagging 
columns, makes us captive and frequently sells 
us into the bondage of idleness and poverty — why 
should not ^^'e lay down a definite course to be pur- 



428 

sued fov our own protection? Why should 
we, with a perfect knowledge of what ails us, and 
with the power to cast out the ailment, continue, 
like the lower animals, to suffer century after cen- 
tury, without hope of betterment? 

It seems to us', your Honors, that our course is 
very plain. And we therefore move this Court for 
a perpetual injunction against these wily plain- 
tiffs, constituting as they do the only "malefactors 
of great wealth" which our country has to fear; 
these devastators of our firesides, these slave-deal- 
ers of the twentieth century, and of all the cen- 
turies, your Honors, these allies against our 
national and individual lives; these parasites, for 
whom we have so long been the unhappy enter- 
taining host land who have consolidated into the 
wickedest trust in the world their common inter- 
est in our despoiling. 

And, your Honors, in order that this injunction 
may endure against all appeal by these wily plain- 
tiffs; in order that the coming generation, misled 
by ignorance of the wrongs inflicted upon us by 
these wily plaintiffs, in its inexperience, its want 
of memory, and its un-suspicion, may not be a vic- 
tim of these wily plaintiffs', like as we have been, 
we move that a period for thought, for wide-ex- 
tended debate and investigation be placed between 
our innocent posterity and the machinations of 
the wk-kedest trust in the world. And the method 
which we shall propose of compelling a long halt 
between the first impulsive thrill of our after-com- 
ers towards' a yielding to the seductive whisper- 
ing of the greatest liar, thief and murderer that 
ever damned the earth, and the conversion of our 
beloved country into a feeble fly to be eaten by 
this horrid spider, tlie wickedest trust in the world, 



429 

is that of a constitutional amendment, making it 
tlie duty of Congress, by stage placed upon stage, 
to build our tariff-dike to the very skies, as the 
producing world outside ripens and becomes more 
and more skillful, in all its length and breadth, 
and brings more and more to bear upon produc- 
tion those mighty economies which the prodigal 
sun of the tropics places within the reach of grow- 
ing intelligence; but an amendment which cuts off 
from Congress forever, except by unanimous vote, 
the power to take from the dike a single brick once 
laid there, while it gives the President a veto power 
for every measure that might neutralize the effect 
of the dike, and deprives him of veto power for 
any measure which might further protect Ameri- 
can Production; and gives to Congress power to 
levy duties on our exports, and to each State and 
every section of the country of a certain size the 
power to constitute itself a zone of production, 
whose products may not go out to other places, 
and into which products from other places' may 
not come except upon the ]3ayment of a certain 
tax. 

And, your Honors, our amendment should cut 
off from our country all the tropical territory here- 
tofore acquired or controlled by it, and prohibit 
the iannexation to it of any other territory what- 
ever not a part of the United States prior to the 
annexation of Porto Rico. 

Our amendment should also make German 
Agreements treasonable; strip from the President 
tlie power of appointment to any public office what- 
ever except to the cabinet, lodging the same in an 
appropriate Commission; make it impeachable for 
the President to summon legislators to him for 
private Cimference during the sessions of Congres'S 



430 

or to use any influence whatever over Congressmen 
or Senators; and lodge with the Supreme Court 
the duty and the power to take cognizance of any 
complaint against the President for any such con- 
ference or such influence; to hear the evidence ad- 
duced in support of such complaint and enter its 
decree thereon and through the proper officers en- 
force the same. 

It should also enjoin the President, during his 
term of office, from i3ublic speechifying and com- 
munications to the public prints, except his annual 
message to Congress; and limit his communica- 
tions to Congress to such annual message and such 
special messages thereafter as might be necessary to 
explain the transmittal thereto of documents of 
public interest. We should thus, your Honors, try 
and put an end to all buttonholing, bullyragging, 
and intimidation on the part of a too strenuous 
Executive. 

But, your Honors, we would not imitate this 
wickedest trust in the world, the only real male- 
factor of great w^ealth among us, and do aught 
suddenly to destroy values and embarrass cruelly 
even this wickedest trust in the world; for this 
would be but to follow^ the reckless and ruthless 
example of this wickedest trust in the world, which 
by a whirlwind campaign against American Pro- 
duction as to the "trusts," "extorting" and "exact- 
ing" from people at home higher prices than they 
get abroad, destroys American Production upon 
a single election day and in an hour sets hun- 
dreds of thousands of our people moving towards 
untimely graves. No, your Honors, all measures 
for th-e destruction of this wickedest trust in the 
world should bo taken decently and in order. Ex- 
port tariffs should gradually cut off entirely the 



431 

wasting abroad of our substance in "raw mate- 
rials,-' whether in provisions, in grains, in fibres, 
in ores, or other products; and, as gradually, and 
pari passu, cut off entirely exports of all manufac- 
tured products ; while an import tariff, gradually in- 
creasing, should finally cut off all imports of what- 
ever nature. Then at last, Avould our people come 
by their own; then w^ould our temptation to steal 
be wholly taken away, and for every want we had 
there would be given us an opportunity to earn 
the price of its satisfaction with the labor of our 
hands in the sweat of our faces and at wages so 
high that our reward would be far greater than 
the reward of stealing. And then the time would 
have arrived, when, as we said some time ago, a 
certificate of American citizenship would be a 
ticket of admission which would pass the bearer 
by St. Peter at the gate without the slightest cross- 
exiamination. 

Here, your Honors, at the close of our argument, 
we repeat what we began with, that sane people 
do not do cruel things for the love of being cruel. 
Even these wily plaintiffs are not moved in their 
respective orbits by malice. They are looking for 
pleasure and running away from pain — just as 
we all are trying to do. But unhappily they and 
their connections in all countries and at all times 
can live and flourish only by the despoiling of 
those w^ith whom they deal. Every country, for 
instance, has its Importing Trust, that only can 
thrive by selling the jobs of Avage-producers there 
to speculators in other countries; and its Export- 
ing Trust whose w^elfare depends upon the exhaus- 
tion of the natural stores of the country in which 
it operates and selling them at low^ competitive 
prices in other countries. The Importing Trust 



432 

robs workers of wages and stifles life; and the 
Exporting Trust robs workers of natural stores 
which would make life easier to bear. Let both 
the Importing Trust and the Exporting Trust prey 
upon a country at the same time, and for the wage- 
producer you have let loose what General Sherman 
said war was. The Importing Trust makes wages 
fall and the Exporting Trust makes prices' rise. 
The Importing Trust makes work scarce and dear; 
and the Exporting Trust makes necessaries scarce 
and dear. The one deprives us' of work; the other 
of goods. As the chances to earn money get fewer 
and fewer, and a man must give more and more 
of himself in exchange for them, the store of goods 
gets smaller and smaller and a man gets less and 
less of them for the money he earns. It is double 
destruction your Honors, for the candle of your 
life is burning away at both ends. You give more 
and more of your blood and muscle, nerve and 
brain, to get hold of a dollar, and more and more 
of your dollars to get back what will restore your 
blood and muscle, nerve and brain. The Import- 
ing Trust leaves you with less and less of life ; and 
the Exporting Trust makes you give up, in trying 
to save the remnant, still more of the little life that 
is left you. 

You can never come by your own until 
you keep out the foreign supply and keep in your 
own. But if you dam out foreign supply, you 
down the Importing Trust; and if you dam in 
American supply, you down the Exporting Trust. 
But both of these trusts, these wily j^laintiffsi, 
must be downed, if we, the wage-producers and 
business men of this country, are to be less than 
the slaves of the wily plaintiffs; for both of these 
trusts make tlioir profits from selling our eivili- 



433 

zatiou, aud by putting us more and more at their 
mercy and making our lives and our forward march 
secondary to their commissions. The evil of for- 
eign commerce is becoming greater and greater 
with the passing months. What does the great 
Lusitania mean, your Honors? What do all these 
great ocean steamships' mean, your Honors? 
What means the declai'ation that more Lusitanias, 
or boats even greater than she, are soon to be built, 
your Honors'? Merely that the wage-producers 
of this country are to be put up at auction more 
and more; that their jobs are to be taken from 
them more and more, and more and more of those 
jobs sold to people abroad who will bid more 
blood and muscle, nerve and brain, for the same 
number of dollars that the wage-producer here 
now receives. It means that, while he is giving 
more and more of his body and brain to earn a 
dollar, he is going to get less and less goods for 
his dollar. It means that both of these wily plain- 
tiffs are going to let out another reef in their pirate 
sails in order to overtake and pillage more quickly 
the great ship American Prosperity. 

This is* what the English Importing and Export- 
ing Trusts are now doing by English wage-work- 
ers, your Honors. For the counterparts of these 
wily plaintiffs in England, your Honors, own and 
run that unhappy country. Wage-producers there 
are slaves' of the English Importing and Export- 
ing Trusts, who are the English Government, the 
English nobility and landed gentry. The British 
Islands are all whittled down to the fine point of 
commercial profit for their grandees and wealthy 
trading classes; while, the British wage-producing 
people are bartered like cattle for the gain of their 
commercialists. All skies are darkened with the 



434 

smoke of British, ships carrying away the products 
of those unhappy islands, made by the bloody sweat 
of their w^orkers, made by coining the bodies and 
souls of (English artisans, made by the sapping of 
the vitals and the sucking away of the energies 
of a once great nation, to pawn in foreign shops 
for the , wherewithal to continue British nabobs in 
their lives of wasteful pleasure; and with the 
smoke of those same ships, bearing back to Eng- 
land the goods which, destroy employment and the 
manhood of British workmen by the tens of thou- 
sands. To continue this process of appalling waste, 
the English lUavy must be maintained to protect 
her foreign trade, at an annual cost alone which 
"staggers humanity." And just this, your Honors, 
is what these wily plaintiffs will bring us Ameri- 
cans to if we don't watch out. Ah, your Honors all 
international trade is but ancient piracy in modern 
clothes. But, your Honors, still with malice to- 
wards none but charity for all, we say ,this thing. 
Thes'e wily plaintiffs, you, and we, and all of us, 
are merely phenomena of , nature ; we are all the 
outcome of environment, of sheer necessity. Even 
our own property-producers are the offspring of 
adamantine circumstance. They are with us be- 
cause the soil for their growth here is kind. They 
will not leave us if we fertilize the soil with con- 
ditions that make for profit to discreet and in- 
telligent management. If we destroy our tariff- 
dike, or even "revise" it at all downward, we will 
lower wages and raise prices. But if w© raise it 
higher and higher, we shall raise wages and low^er 
prices — in the long run. If wages fall, it will 
be because our wage-producers are out of work 
and so of money and so of power to patronize our 
property-producers; and all this will be for the 



435 

reason that our property-producers cannot em- 
ploy our wage-producers because foreign imports 
are taking away their domestic market; and when 
this happens', our property-producers too, must 
show the same servility to circumstance which 
rules' us all ; they must go away from us, in accord- 
ance with our law, ^and seek the area of cheapest 
production for this market; and that never can 
be here. 

But jour Honors, to make here an environment 
wholesome for the property-producer, upon whose 
activities we all depend, lies' with our property -pro- 
ducers themselves, with our wage-producers and 
our adjunct-producers'; with the .business men of 
this country, the farmers, the merchants and manu- 
facturers, the builders of railoads, bridges, and 
houses, and those who furnish and fit them for our 
wage-producers. For our property-producers, our 
wage-producers and our adjunct producers, who are 
the merchants who sell our wage-producers their 
necessaries of life, and all the great railroads and 
steamship and other lines that take care of the 
carrying and delivering to our wage-producers of 
the goods of our farmers, manufacturers, and mer- 
chants, are in an overwhelming majority; and they 
are not only numerous enough to ordain here by 
transient congressional enactments, an environ- 
ment in which property-production must flourish; 
but numerous enough to make the whole country's 
business stable in perpetuo by the constitutional 
amendments which we have heretofore hinted at. 
They only need to take hold lall together, and the 
country will be saved from further spoliation by 
these wily plaintiffs'. 

And our President also, he who has wrought so 
masterfully to further thes'e wily plaintiffs in their 



436 

dire purposes against the savings fund of this coun- 
try, is like the rest of us, a creature of environment. 
He does as he must, pushed on by his brain-cells 
over which he has no control. His conscience 
brain-cells are large and promising, but still so 
subordinate to the brain-cells that preside over 
fighting and vain-glory that he thinks what he does 
for his own glory is done from a high sense of duty ! 
Oh, your Honors, ''Wad some power the giftie gie 
us to see oursels' as ithers see us!" But with the 
proper change of environment, there is hope for 
the President also. And let us all hope and rev- 
erently pray that the xlmerican people may see 
their way clear to furnish that change ! 

Finally, your Honors, the, gradual snuffing out 
of these wily plaintiffs, composing this "trust^' 
whose tentacles, octupus-like, hold in their wither- 
ing and wizzening grasp the production of the 
world, would merge the great question of business 
stability, the great question of the equitable dis- 
tribution of wealth, the relation of capital and 
labor, and the great issue of socialism into one and 
would solve all these riddles at once. For with 
the American , demand religiously confined to the 
American supply; and the American supply as re- 
ligiously confined to the American demand, busi- 
ness would be as' eternally stable as the recurring 
daily needs of all our people; work would be as 
abundant as the flood of our, wants requiring work 
to satisfy tliem ; and by the rising of wages through 
the competition of property-producers' for the wage- 
producer, on the one hand; and the falling of prices 
through the competition of property-producers 
for, our market, on the other hand, the whole pro- 
duct of the wage-producers would be more and more 
widely and equitably distributed, without ham- 



437 

j^tringing initiative and ambition by an arbitary 
sharing of the rewards of labor. 

Yes, your Honors, all things come to him who 
works' for fair wages. Our gospel is that found 
in the Holy Scripture of Work. The Gospel of 
Work is more holy than that preached by any evan- 
gel from the dark land of superstition; for it is 
only in the soil prepared by abundant and well- 
paid Work that Morality, Education, and true Re- 
ligion can grow to their highest estate. 

And if your Honors but grant to your petitioner, 
the defendant in this action, all the matters and 
things enumerated and described herein, your peti- 
tioner will ever pray. 



Gentle Reader, we are not a "conspiracy of rich 
men," and we have not back of us', to beat "my 
policies," a five-million-dollar corruption fund. 
We are only a humble citizen feeling many things 
and saying but very few. For aught we know, 
we are an undesirable citizen. 

It seems to us that matters are a good deal mix- 
ed up in the way we are doing things and let- 
ting things and politicians do us. We ought to 
stroke the fur the right way in this world; and 
we ought to stroke a man in the direction of his 
brain-cells. W"e ought never to expect a man to 
do the right thing except we stroke his brain-cells 
in the right direction. If we do we shall spoil 
his fur and he will spoil ours. 



438 

Now, gentle reader, it is wrong to worship our 
own brain-cells any more than we worship the 
brain-cells of others. For we are all just bud- 
gets of brain-cells over which we have absolutely 
no control. They will beat us every time and the 
biggest bunch will always be on top. But other 
people can mold our brain-cells to fit new environ- 
ments; and we can mold other people's brain- 
cells to fit new environments. Or, rather, just as 
Jacob did with the heifers, we can shrewdly cook 
up an environment that, in God's good time, will 
mold the brain-cells of other® so that they will 
fit the new environment; and if we contrive that 
environment to suit us, the new arrangement of 
brain-cells will suit us, too, — and the heifers will 
be colored so that they will belong to us. Jacob 
only anticipated our philosophy by some thousands 
of years. He was the shrewd forefather of a shrewd 
and careful race of business men who will surely 
understand our philosophy, and, we think, help us 
to inculcate it. 

To point the moral and adorn the tale, we ought 
to surround our public servants' with environ- 
ments that will move their brain-cells into harmony 
with our interests. Now, an environment that 
will make their honest brain-cells more powerful 
than their dishonest ones, is one which would sur- 
round them with such conditions that their pru- 
dent brain-cells would tell them they could not get 
away with the goods even if they tried. 

This is plain common sense, as it seems to us. 
But what have we been doing in this country for a 
hundred years? Why, in spite of the fact that 
Congress has no constitutional power to jeopard- 
ize the life of an American citizen, except so far 



439 

as to make him bear arms in the country's defense 
or the enforcement of its laws, nevertheless our 
Congressmen^ and the President, have absolute 
power in times of peace, in return for any bribe 
to their ambitions or to their purses, to take the 
lives of whole groups of American citizens. For 
they have the power to make laws which will mow 
down the sources of employment and so the lives 
of millions of our citizens at once, in order to 
make way here in our market for foreign goods, 
the manufacturers of which, as represented by the 
great Importing Trust in this country, may, by 
some means, have prevailed upon Congress and the 
President 'to abolish discrimination in favor of 
American Production and allow a cost-20 world 
to invade our cost-100 country with its goods. To 
do this is and always has been just as surely to 
destroy the lives of countless Americans as if there 
had been passed a national law which marched 
forth a million or so of our wage-producers to 
face a wall and have their backs bored with bullets 
from the muskets of firing files from a fort. It 
matters not that this result has been brought about 
bv laws ostensibly made to regulate customs duties. 
The efficient cause of such legislation was the pur- 
pose to destroy American employment; and the 
destruction of employment is the destruction of 
life; and reasoning beings are chargeable with in- 
tending to do exactly what their acts are the in- 
evitable cause of. This domestic market of ours 
is our most valuable treasure. It is more sought 
after by foreign lobbies in Washington than gold 
mines are sought after by the rest of us. And yet 
we place this treasure, all uncounted, at the dis- 
posal of our law-makers in Washington as freely as 



440 

if it were a babbling spring on the Capitol grounds. 
The Constitution prohibits Congress from depriV' 
ing an^^body of '^life, liberty, or property with- 
out due process of law" and from taking pri- 
vate property * * * * f^j. public use without 
just compensation." And yet we let Congress do 
both of these things by merely whipping the devi] 
around the stump of tariff legislation. 

But this is not all. Not only have we placed 
in th-e hands of Congress and the President abso- 
lute power over the greatest treasure on earth, 
but, by an inadvertence in our Constitution, we 
have placed in the hands of the President alone 
power, under certain circumstaiices, to efface Con- 
gress as a deliberative body and use it as a means 
of passing any law which carries grist to his mill. 
We have done this' by giving him power, through 
his agents and emissaries, to go into any congress- 
ional district and control the local political 
machine of an "insurgent" Congressman's party 
and destroy his political life for getting in the way 
of the President's private schemes. 

We have seen Mr. Koosevelt make use of this 
power to effect the Cuban Treaty, and to pass the 
Hepburn law, which latter was simply for the pur- 
pose of burning incense to the idol in the White 
House ; since, because of the Elkins Law, the Hep- 
bum-Roosevelt law was Avholly superfluous from 
the start and known to be so by the President's ad- 
visers; and in addition to these two iniquities, this 
same power will probably be used to get congress- 
ional approval of the infamous German Agreement, 
and very likely to pass a measure for free trade 
with the Philippine Islands. Three of these meas- 
ures strike at the bread and butter of the country; 
for thev are calculated to cut off employment of 



441 

labor here at home, arrest property-production and, 
both as to scope and period, depress business in- 
definitely. 

It is very plain that, to make Congress and the 
President worthy custodians of the employment, 
and so the lives, of all the people of these United 
States, their brain-cells should be environed by 
a constitutional amendment making lawful any 
discrimination, by tariffs or otherwise, in favor 
of American employment, and unlawful the with- 
drawal of any part of such discrimination once 
effected; and the power to make any treaty im- 
pairing that discrimination in any way should be 
taken away from the Senate. 

It is unfair to Congress and the President thus 
to leave at their mercy an uncounted and unin- 
ventoried treasure as great as our domestic em- 
ployment, a treasure, the marketable value of 
which, in hard dollars' and cents, is too tremen- 
dous for calculation. To car^^e it up in large or 
small slices and sell it abroad in exchange for one 
consideration or another, is a temptation greater 
than our servants should be called upon to with- 
stand. That our employment has thus been carved 
up and sold in the past is evidenced by the thou- 
sand successes our Importing Trust has scored in 
pilfering our employment for its intelligence office 
abroad. Just now it is bribing our newspapers to 
help it take away the employment of the wage-pro- 
ducers in our paper mills. 

We ordinary mortals, with half an eye, may see 
the perils of this situation. The condition of our 
Constitution in this respect, giving, as it does, 
power to our national law-makers to sell to the Im- 
porting Trust, either for cash or some other con- 



442 

sideration, any portion of our employment or do- 
mestic market they choose, puts a premium on 
bribery and corruption and makes treason to 
our national interests in this regard unpunish- 
able. In the matter of faithlessness to our 
employment, neither of our leading political 
parties has an unpurchasable scruple. The Re- 
publican machine is no better in that regard than 
the Democratic, a fact which has been proved by 
more than one betrayal. For instance, the ink 
was hardly dry on the Republican Party's plat- 
form pledge to our sugar-growers, before the Repub- 
licans ratified the Cuban Treaty, which was a ruth- 
less abandonment of all the sugar-growing inter- 
ests of this country to tropical competition.* 
And there seems little doubt that, under the heel 
of the insistent Roosevelt, the same chameleon 
party will follow up its Cuban treachery by free 
trade with the Philix)pine Islands, which, combined 
with Cuban, Porto Rican and Hawaiian competi- 
tion, would, in ten years, absolutely destroy the 
last sugar mill and sugar and rice plantation in 
the United States. 

Now, gentle reader, you may be assured that 
there is a vulgar quid pro quo, in cash or votes, 
for every lapse of tariff virtue on the part of the 
G. O. P., just as much as there is for lapses by 
the Democratic Party from its cardinal principles. 
No political party is ever better than it is com- 



*" In 1907 nine months "^ * * we imported * * * 
of cane sugar 4,733,000.000 -^ - -- pouuds •'^- * ^- 
an increase [over the correspondine: nine months of 1906] of 
600,000,000 pounds." N. 1^ >^?m, Thursday Nov. 21. 1907. 

If the Cuban Treaty and free trade with Hawaii and Porto 
Rico had not dampened the ardor of our sujrar producers, at 
least this additional 600,000,000 pounds of sugar would have 
been produced in the TTnited States by this date. Ed, 



443 

pelied to be. The only way to make and keep it 
good is to hedge its brain-cells all round about 
with an environm-ent that will put it in the peni- 
tentiary if it does not tote fair; and the way to 
make our employment safe against Congress and 
the President, is to fence it in and put up signs, 
"The President and Congress will please keep off 
of this lawn," and if they don't obey the sign, 
send the sheriff after them. 

In tossing away our domestic employment for 
this' or that consideration best known to himself, 
Mr. Roosevelt, in tlie way that anybody of mature 
mind should have expected, has met our Uncle- 
Rube-like trust in the way that Uncle Rubes' 
usually are met. Unless some one calls a halt on 
him there seems no ground to believe that he will 
not take a s*tep nearer pleasure and farther from 
pain by selling another section of our employment 
market to some other foreign War-Lord. Our em- 
ployment market seems to be about his best asset 
for buying popularitv of foreign potentates. 

Now, we believe that we should nail the Presi- 
dent and Congress by constitutional amendments 
to such an environment that they cannot monkey 
in any way with our employment market here at 
home, any more than they can take any other prop- 
erty of ours and sell it for their own benefit, "with- 
out due process of law;" or any more than they 
can march any of us up to certain execution at 
the musket's mouth, except in defense of law and 
order. 

The next thing we should do should be to join 
in arranging such an evironment here for us all 
that, when our respective brain-cells had so per- 
muted and combined themselves' as to make the 



444 

most or it, we should find that the very same things 
led us all towards pleasure and away from pain, 
at one and the same time, at least as far as* em- 
ployment, wages, and business were concerned. 
How would we do this? Why, simply by fixing 
it so all employment to meet American wants 
should be divided among wage-producers within 
the United States of America. But we should 
swear in wage-producers in some way so they could 
not imitate the Italians, Hungarians, Canadians, 
and others, who come here over summer, get 
all of our jobs they can, and then go back for the 
winter to their foreign homes and, in the shape 
of our cash, scatter our American employment all 
over their own countries instead of here. That is 
not the ffiir T)lay which we believe in. The square- 
ness of the deal is above our reach. The dealer 
to us all is our Maker — in whom we still trust 
nevertheless— and we cannot go behind those re- 
turns. But what we do believe in is fair play 
am.ono: those to whom Divine Providence has 
alrpodv dp.^lt more or less favorable hands. 

We would so fix it that every wage-producer who 
staved with us here throu2^h thick and thin, whether 
he was an immi2:rant of thirty days or of three 
centnries' standing, — for we are all immig^rants 
in various stashes of bakins: — had an equal right 
with everv other like wage-r>roducer to get all the 
emTilovment he could in this' American domestic 
market. We would calk up so tight every leak 
in our boat, however beaten upon bv foreign seas, 
that we would have no foreign-trade bilge- water 
in onr hold. It would be impossible to "cuss out" 
clnRs lesrislation then. Every gander would have 
the pqirtp sance as everv 2:oose. Nobodv could taunt 
the protective tariff — protective in very truth — 



445 

with taking money out of the pocket of one citi- 
zen and putting it in the pocket of another. For 
the same dike would stand between all and the 
foreign deluge. We would all be standing on the 
same plateau, above foreign countries both in 
wages, prices, and level of life. And if any man 
failed to find a market, at the American price, for 
his own muscle, mind, or goods; in other words', 
if, in the higher wages or prices caused by the 
dike, he failed to get back his higher cost caused 
by the dike, it would be because he was too lazy 
to work in our industrial hive. If he preferred to 
be a drone, that would be his funeral. He should 
furnish the corpse and not we. 

Why, gentle reader, the only w^ay in which we 
can have here a sound industrial body (let's call 
it an "Industrium" for short, and to distinguish 
it from "Imperium") is' to cut off foreign trade 
and convert our international peddlers into use- 
ful, honest, patriotic citizens. They are only 
wandering birds of prey now. They really have 
no abiding city. They peddle abroad a country's 
produce or its employment in any way they find 
most profitable until they have peddled it dry; 
and then they fling aw^ay the empty orange skin 
and find an orange somewhere else. But we should 
make them a part of us; make them peddle among 
onr people at home our goods made at home; for 
they cannot live without peddling. It is born in 
them; and we hate the cruelty which would make 
them work for a living. We should draw their 
claws and make them nice purring little helpmates 
to US' all. 

We would utterly kill foreign trade by benevo- 
lent degrees. For our American Industrium is 



446 

like our bodies. We cannot jab it full of holes 
with foreign trade and have it healthy and happy 
any more than we can jab our bodies full of holes 
and be healthy and happy. And so we say, "Set 
these Importing and Exporting Trust peddlers at 
s'ome other job than jabbing our Industrium full 
of holes.'' No matter how much they chatter and 
clatter about it or what kinds of money they arm 
their congressional lobbies with, we ought to cut 
them out. 

Let us look at this Industrium business a mom- 
ent, gentle reader. 

Every civilized country has its Industrium in 
a greater or smaller degree of perfection. Sup- 
pose we merge all the Industria of foreign coun- 
tries into one and call them the "Foreign Indus- 
trium,'' as compared with our own, which we will 
call the "Domestic Industriiim." Now, in order 
to study closely their relations, let us build these 
two Industria right near each other and take a 
good look at them. Like this: 

DOMESTIC INDUSTRIUM. 



r •+ 1 I r Property- 1" f Property- | 

L^apital v_= J Production. I — J Preservation. > 

& II Wage- f— ] Wage- 

Labor J (^ Production. J L Production. ^ 



/ 



Transportation j f Distribution, or 

Wage- >- = J "Business. 

Production. ] ^ Wage- 

J Production. 



447 

FOREIGN INDUSTRIUM. 

(Same as preceding.) 
To explain the terms used in these schemes: 

Property-Production embraces manufacturing, 
mining, and farming. 

AVage-Production is what the worker is doing. 
Wage-Production is the factor common to all these 
divisions of the "Industrium." 

Property-Preseryation takes in the work of all 
people engaged in things which directly or indi- 
rectly maintain property. 

Transportation takes in every means of taking 
goods or people from one place to another. 

Distribution is storing and delivering goods by 
whatever means. 

Now you will observe that both in the Domestic 
and the Foreign Industrium, Capital and Labor 
are the basis of it all. This is so everywhere. These 
two factors are the drivers of the whole tandem 
represented in our scheme. You cannot have act- 
ive capital without having active labor; and act- 
ive labor indicates active capital. Any condition 
which will keep capital flowing into Property-Pro- 
duction will keep this merry tandem in motion. 
But shrink your capital and you have shrunken 
every member of this procession. 

The main thing, however, to which we wish to 
call your attention is the universality of Wage- 
Production and so of Wage-Producers throughout 
this scheme. The whole thing, in fact is wage- 
production; and every human being that works 
anywhere in this combination is a wage-producer, 
whether he is a ditch-digger, a trolley-driver, a 



448 

bank president, or the head of one of our horrid 
"trusts." And all Avage-producers depend for their 
lives upon the comparative volume of the capital 
which flows into Property-Production, which is 
nothing more or less than the great job provided 
by the country's doing its own work. Make this 
job smaller, and you make proportionately smaller 
the volume of capital flowing into Property-Pro- 
duction, and so into Property-Preservation, so into 
Transportation, and so into Business, and all along 
the line you throw out of the ranks of wage-pro- 
ducers people who must faint and fail the moment 
their wage-production ceases. 

Property-Production, animated by capital seek- 
ing investment, is the mainspring which moves 
every other division in our scheme; and the de- 
gree of its activity is directly proportioned to the 
percentage of the Avork for the country which is 
done by the country. 

To be sure we get the idea, let us analyze each 
of these divisions a little, and see how each one 
of them contributes to "Business" by the main- 
tenance of our great army of wage-producers, all 
of whom buy. from "Business" their necessaries 
and luxuries, paying therefor the wages they have 
produced in the various divisions of our "Indus- 
trium," which, after all, is the same as "Employ- 
ment." 

Starting with Property-Production, what are 
wage-producers doing here? Why, they are manu- 
facturing property for use, not only in Property- 
Production but in Property-Preservation, Trans- 
portation, and Business* itself; all of which prop- 
erty, as fast as made, is being delivered by Prop- 
erty-Production to Distribution, or "Business," 
in exchange for the very wages* which Property- 



449 

Production has* previously paid wage-producers, 
who have bought with them of ''Business'^ stores 
which Property-Production had previously lodged 
with "Business.'' 

In the division of Property-Preservation, again, 
the whole thing is run by wage-producers, who are 
taking care of property in various ways. In this 
division belong our arniy and navy, uur police and 
constabulary, and our militia. Our doctors, law- 
yers and ministers also belong here, the doctors 
preserving lives and therefore preserving the pre- 
servers of property; the lawyers preserving prop- 
erty titles and property-rights; the ministers 
inculcating morals and making both life and prop- 
erty safer. And in this division, too, belong all the 
wage-producers in insurance companies. And all 
these wage-producers, too, carry their wages to 
"Business" to exchange for the work done by 
Property-Production. 

In the division of Transportation, we have 
another great swarm of wage-producers', who also 
depend for their jobs entirely upon Property-Pro- 
duction, since their business is moving the output 
of Property-Production. A glance at the employ- 
ment lists of our railroad, telegraph, express", and 
steamship companies, to say nothing of the great 
crowd of small proprietors of hacks, express- 
wagons, and messenger routes, would give some 
idea of how great a figure Transportation cuts in 
the country's employment and the host of wage- 
producers which it is daily sending to "Business" 
for supplies. 

In the division of Distribution, commonly called 
"Business," the wage-production is also colossal. 
A count of the clerks, salesmen, foremen, buyers, 
packers, and the like, employed in a single great 



450 

department store would give a clear notion of the 
gigantic proportions of this wage-producing 
branch of our Industrium. There is' this to be said 
further about this Division that it is the clearing 
house of Property-Production. It is where pro- 
ducts are liquidated by the wages of our great 
AVage-Production, made up as it is from contri- 
butions from the millions of workers in the various 
divisions of our Industrium. As the whole coun- 
try's active industrial life rests firmly upon Prop- 
erty-Production^ so Proper-ty-Production depends 
upon "Business" to make its product fluid and, by 
the purchase of its product, to return to it the capi- 
tal without which it could not proceed. Any break- 
ing of the return current of capital from "Busi- 
ness" to Property-Production, strangles Property- 
Production which strangles wage-production, 
which strangles "Business" in the large national 
sense, which strangles people to physical death. 

Now, we, a wage-100 country, therefore a cost- 
100 country, and therefore a life-100 country, are 
surrounded on all sides by a world in which wages 
average 20, costs average 20, and life averages 20. 
And here is the great opportunity for the inter- 
national peddler, the destroyer of national life. 
Naturally enough, he Avants to put the difference 
between our cost-100 and the foreign cost-20 in 
his pocket, or as much of it as he can get, say a 
commission of about 78 points. He puts up a con- 
siderable money to do it, either in maintaining a 
bureau of education, to touch people's hearts with 
the sufferings of the poor Cubans or the little 
brown men; or in maintaining a straight lobby to 
snare in the President and Congress. Suppose he 
succeeds and gets a Cuban Treaty, German Agree- 
ment, a French Reciprocity Arrangement, or an 



451 

out and out ^^revision' — what then? Well, here 
is where the Foreign ludustriuni comes in. Our 
peddler is the direct agent and commission repre- 
sentative of the entire Foreign Industrium. There- 
fore, right alongside of our Domestic Industrium, 
he sets up his branch office representing the For- 
eign Industrium, in the form of a booth crammed 
Avith goods "Made in Germany,'' "Made in France," 
and so on, and baits his trap with advertisements 
cutting under American cost-100 by, say, a couple 
of points. Now like shortsighted children of 
mature our wage-producers come along and see 
these attractions in price and immediately proceed 
to feather the arrows which a little later drink 
their own heart's blood; for they fall into the in- 
ternational peddler's trap and buy goods the price 
of which does not go back to our own Industrium 
division, Property-Production, but scoots off across 
the water land swells the Property-Production of 
the Foreign Industrium; and just exactly in the 
measure that our wage-producers patronize the in- 
ternational peddler, does the stream of our capi- 
tal returning to Property-Production diminish, 
and so diminish the stream floAving through Prop- 
erty-Preservation, Transportation, and American 
Business. The moment this stream begins to 
slacken, wage-producers begin to be laid off all 
the way from Property-Production, through the 
entire tandem of our Industrium to and includ- 
ing "Business;" and hard times are beginning, just 
as the}^ are now because of the German Agreement, 
the Cuban Treaty, free trade with Porto Kico and 
Hawaii and the general slackness and deviltry in 
our customs serTice, aided and abetted by the Roose- 
velt Administration in discharging Mr. Wakeman 
and exiling other customs officials who were faith- 



452 

fill to their stewardship of the great American Tar- 
iff anti-Deluge Dike. And just as our Industrium 
waxes weak and weary by the operations of our 
international peddler and our German Agreements', 
the Foreign Industrium becomes inflated with rich 
red bloody and, beginning with Great Britian and 
going east to the eastern shores of Japan, you 
hear across the water the increasing whirr and 
clatter, rattle and hum of the shops and factories 
abroad. And now the world chucks us under the 
chin and says we are such fine fellows, just as the 
German War-Lord did Dr. Nicholas Murray But- 
ler, of Columbia College, who came home so 
warmed with the cordiality of royalty that, in 
order that this cup of cordiality might remain for- 
ever full, he wanted the tariff-dike tumbled down 
some more right away. 

After this sort of thing goes on a while, we be- 
gin to sicken from "over-production" — in foreign 
Industria. Millions of our wage-producers are out 
of employment, and hard times of the hardest- 
boiled kind engulf the country. The strong weaken 
and the weakened die all around us, just from the 
tightening of the grip of this international ped- 
dler on our industrial throats; and we are broken 
out all over with the small -pox of over-produc- 
tion; that is, with the monoply by the Foreign In- 
dustrium, employing foreign labor, of the terri- 
tory naturally belonging to the Domestic Indus- 
trium employing domestic labor. But it is a good 
ways to the next congressional election; and still 
farther, perhaps, to the next presidential election, 
when, may be, the people will be wide awake enough 
to the source of their trouble to displace a com- 
placent Roosevelt, a rollicking Taft, or a German- 
Agreement-making Root. And so the country wal- 



453 

lows on in the deep mire of misery year after year. 
Panic after panic sweeps the country, as it sinks 
deeper and deeper in the poverty puddle. Not weak 
little, so-called '"Roosevelt" panics, caused by cur- 
rency-hoarders, but real deep-down ague spasms 
caused by the chill of dissolution creeping closer 
and closer to the patient's heart. 

The cost to the country of supplanting its own 
Industrium by the Foreign Industrium in this way 
is too great for calculation; because it is paid not 
only in almost uncountable money-heaps but also 
in the lives of whole armies of our people; in the 
degradation of yet greater armies; and in the cur- 
tailment of vitality of the entire national life. 

And yet we have experienced this many times 
and shall experience it in the future just as often 
as the campaign of the Importing Trust, with its 
studied slanders and libels against our "trusts,'* 
American Production, our "Malefactors of Great 
Wealth," and our "Very Rich Men," enfuriates our 
wage-producers to the point where they smash the 
porridge pot from w^hich they are feeding. 

The trouble at this present w^riting is that we 
have been so flippant in our choice of a President, 
so much given to hero-worship rather than the wor- 
ship of cold common sense, that we find on our 
hands a President who, whether he has intended 
it or not, has played right into the hands of our 
international peddlers, and, in addition to his 
Cuban Treaties and foreignizing of our custom 
house, to say nothing of his German Agreements, 
has joined the regulation hue and cry of our Im- 
porting Trust against American Production and 
has done his very best to make it more perilous to 
do American business than to scale the Wetter- 
horn. 



454 

Now, gentle reader, dou't you agree with us 
tliat we should all join in building in this country 
an environment too strenuous for the brain-cells 
of the Importing Trust to flourish in? Or, at 
any rate, one in which all its members' may be 
turned to good account in adding to the red-blood 
corpuscles of our Domestic Industrium? We 
think there should not be two opinions about this. 

Now, gentle reader, in making the nation do all 
its own work and itself taking the pay thei-efor, 
and honestly paying its own workers, there is a 
panacea for national ailments, if it is dili- 
gently Uised. We all need the money; for unfor- 
tunately we have to eat, drink, wear clothes, and 
sleep and, in this climate, sleep under cover. This 
is the medicine that poor little Porto Eico needs; 
and so does Cuba; and so do the Philippine Islands. 
No other dose goes to the spot. Why, you know 
they said that if we would only give poor little 
Porto Rico our domestic market, she would blos- 
som as the rose. She got our market; and to pay 
for it, in some things' Ave are getting it in the neck. 
But even at that cost to us, it did not help poor 
little Porto Rico. She did not blossom as the rose. 
She is hollering all the time that she is dying of 
something on her inside. But, if Congress would 
only build a coifer-dam around about that poor 
little island, a good high tariff -dam, and then pump 
out all the water of foreign competition, so Porto 
Ricans could get their breath and build their in- 
dustries, being sure at least of their own market 
in which to sell things, she would begin to be happy 
over a. single one of her lovely tropical nights. 
She would begin in a humble way, to be sure; but 
in as large a way as she would be entitled to, a 
way just as large as the market furnished by her 



455 

own people for her own products. That is all any 
of us are entitled to. But Porto Kico certainly is* 
entitled to that; and we are a mean lot of petty 
robbers to keep taking it from her by forcing her 
to free trade with us, which to the enslavement of 
her common people, merely gives a handfuj of 
coffee and sugar planters a chance to exploit her 
eternally, just as England exploits Ireland, India 
and EgjTDt, and would, if she dared, Canada, Aus- 
tralia, and the ancient Boer Kepublic. 

To return to our own case, the first thing to 
be done is to control these international peddlers 
who constitute the Importing and Exporting 
Trusts; and the way to do that is to control Con- 
gi'ess. And, with a little organization and deter- 
mination, that is "dead easy." Our wage-produ- 
cers, property-producers, and distributors, or 
"business" men, should form a league in each con- 
gressional district, the motto of which should be, 
"This country must do every cent's worth of its 
own work and pay its own people the wages there- 
for;" and the practice of which should be the in- 
dorsement of the congressional candidate of any 
party that would work for the league in Congress'. 

If no candidate for Congress could he found who, 
in exchange for its indorsement, would accept the 
commission of vsuch a league, the league should 
advance its own candidate. 

There should be as many such leagues' as there 
nre conirressional districts in the United States; 
«nnfl, as fast as formed, the dis'trict leagues should 
become members of the National Business League, 
an organization having the same motto as the con- 
stituent leagues, through which the district leagues 
could act as a unit, to pass any congres'sional act 
favorable to any industry represented in the league 



456 

and to defeat any such act of the contrary char- 
acter. "All for each and each for all," should be 
the rule of leagut; action. 

At presidential elections, the National Business 
League should indorse and work for any candi- 
date who would accept the commission of the 
league to protect American wage-producers; pro- 
vided that the platform of the party to which such 
candidate belonged, contained the motto of the 
league, "This country must do every cent's worth 
of its own work and pay its own people the wages 
therefor." 

If no party would adopt the motto of the cen- 
tral league, it should nominate its own candidate. 

The final goal of the national league should be 
a constitutional amendment covering the points 
noted in our argument before the Court of Appeals 
to which this is an addendum ; and with this would 
come the final elimination of raids on the "trust 
"malefactors of great wealth," and all the other 
tricks by which international peddlers steal our 
savings. 

We cannot afford to forget that, at the back of 
all business, stands the wage-producer, whether he 
pushes a quill in an office or a pick in a sewer ditch. 
He is 99% of us all. He is the country. He con- 
sumes nearly ten times as much as the average 
consumer in the outside world. There are some- 
thins: over 80,000,000 of him, equivalent to about 
.^00,000,000 of the average wage-producer in the 
outside world. Why, gentle reader, if we corraled 
him here with a sky-high tariff dike and a similar 
tariff dam, and let goods neither out nor in, as a 
consumer, in a few years he would be worth as 
much to us business men as a thousand millions of 
the half-employed and half-fed denizens of the 



457 

"markets of the world." We could do this so 
easily; and yet, following the beck of the inter- 
national peddlers and the direction their dollars 
take with congressional lobbies, we go on passing 
the hat like beggars' around among the outside na- 
tions, getting a few dollars of trade here and a 
few dollars more there, and thinking we are doing 
great wonders. The patronage of this wage-produ- 
cer of ours is the only hope of all domestic produc- 
tion and business ; and on the other hand, his only 
hope is this domestic market consecrated to him 
alone. Why not put these destructive interna- 
tional peddlers out of their cruel business forever; 
make them hammer their swords into ploughshares 
and pruning hooks, take out citizens' papers, marry 
American girls, stop Mr. Eoosevelt's anxiety about 
race-suicide, and pull with us forever and forever 
in keeping this domestic market exclusively for 
our own wage-producers. The wage-producer is 
our game. Let us multiply him, but never divide 
or subtract or distract him. Let us keep him for- 
ever busy, increase his pay at every possible jump, 
and make him a better and better buyer of our 
goods. If we do this, we business men who sell 
things to this crowd of wage-producers will have 
the softest cinch in steady business, steady finan- 
ces and steady fortunes rolling our way that evei^ 
was dreamed of. 

Then, again, by thus casting out foreign trade 
with its unmanageable balances and our etern'^' 
dependence upon "crops" for business stability, 
we would solve once and forever the perplexing 
currency problem. 

Such a consummation, so devoutly to be wished, 
would hitch all us real domestic business men to- 
gether with hooks of steel, even if we had to buy 



458 

the hooks' of the United States Steel Corporation 
and oil the chain- joints with oil from the Standarfl 
Oil Company. Why, gentle reader, we wonld soon 
find that these monster ''trusts" would not bite 
us. Bless your dear heart, they couldn't ' They 
would have to work as hard for us as we did for 
them. Do what they might; get as big and ^ 
rich as they pleased; gather all the power they 
could, they would still be our servants. For, after 
'all, all their wealth would be but part of the 
common wealth of the country, driving our great- 
est industries, paying the longest pay-rolls, and 
sending more and more wage-producers with fat 
wages to our shops and stores', where it would be 
no trouble to show goods and where if our cus- 
tomers did not see what they wanted they would 
only have to ask for it. And all at a margin for 
us. 

We would s'oon learn that all Malefactors of 
Great Wealth, whose total wickedness was only 
being wealthy, whether they liked it or not, were 
our greatest friends; for they could not get, keep, 
and add to wealth without helping us do exactly 
the same thing. 

We American business men should all get to- 
irether on the platform of "All American Business 
for American Business ^len." We ought to let 
all our old party ties go. They make us no money; 
but the new business ties would malre it for us 
and plenty of it. 

In this matter of loyalty to American business 
there should be no North, no South, no East, no 
West; and in it there should be no Republican, 
no Democrat, no Prohibitionist, no Labor man, no 
Socialist, no Anarchist, and no stalker of Male- 



459 

factors of Great Wealth. In this combination there 
would be wealth enough for every one — if he earned 
it. In fact, this sort of a combination would make 
all the reasons' for the old political divisions melt 
like mists at summer's midday. Our brain-cells 
would all be set to the same music by our happy 
environment. We would all be pulling in perfect 
rhyme and time in the same direction ; that is', we 
would all be pulling away from pain and towards 
pleasure — and most of us would get there. We 
would be wealth-shy no longer. We would be get- 
ting so rich ourselves that none of us would like 
to hear Jeremiads' against "very rich wrongdoers." 
And all the time we would be gettting more and 
more persuaded that wealth gained by hard work 
never could hurt anybody. We would get it out 
of our heads that Malefactors of Great Wealth 
were any different from the rest of us. We would 
find they were not monsters, but on the contrary 
were very human. We would find blood in their 
bodies. We would notice that, when we cut them, 
they bled the same as other folk. We would also 
find that some of them had larger and some smaller 
hearts than ours ; and that the most of the greatest 
of them had hearts as large and as warm as their 
fortunes; for we would realize that, after all, sym- 
pathy makes for success in dealing with ones fel- 
low men and making large masses of interests 
march in harmony, the harmony which makes great 
wealth. If we reflected a little, we would realize 
that the great majority of Malefactors of Very 
Great Wealth do lots of good with their money, 
and that it is they who endow colleges', build hos- 
pitals, orphan asylums, libraries, and in other 
ways do the very best thing with their money that 
possibly could be done for broad humanity, but 



400 

never would be done except for so much money 
coming under the control of a single owner and 
his having so much of it that anxiety for his own 
outcome is laid aside and his nobler impulses given 
a chance to flourish. 

But it will take some cold calculation and some 
hard work for us to get started on this road. In 
the first place, we have a presidential election just 
ahead and we Avant to make sure and not commit 
the same blunder we did four years ago. The last 
man in the world to be President of these United 
States is a man who knows nothing about hard- 
headed business, the science of markets, and the 
necessities of domestic trade, and who thinks he 
can barter away the American domestic market 
in sections, as if it were sections of his own kitchen 
garden, giving to a favorite here one section and 
to a favorite there another section, and generally 
showing no more real intelligence about the coun- 
try's absolute dependence upon domestic prop- 
erty-production than a five-months' Louisiana bear 
cub. What we need for a President of this coun- 
try is a sound-headed, careful business man, whose 
heart is too large to ignore the connection between 
a man's employment and his stomach, and the con- 
nection also between a man's stomach and his life; 
and whose simple common sense is strong enough 
to understand that you cannot give away the coun- 
try's employment to the Cubans, the Germans, the 
French, the Philippine Islands and other people 
and at the same time keep it for wage-producers 
in the United States. And rather than a politician 
for such a place, we would prefer a man who had 
had head enough to make a fortune of his own, 
liead enough to keep it after it was* made, and 



461 

nevertheless head enough not to lose his head be- 
cause he had power, as the people's servant, even 
great enough to control the press and to efface 
Congress'. In short, than such a politician, we 
would far rather see go to the White House some 
level-headed Malefactor of Great Wealth* 



* A practical question is what candidate business men and 
wage-producers should back in 1908 for President. Mr. Roose- 
velt, Mr. Taft, or any one chosen by Mr. Roosevelt should be 
out of the question. Of those who would be certain to do 
nothing to harm American business, we mention the following 
In their order of desirability : 

Senator Foraker: He has proven himself a statesman of sin- 
gularly fine poise and breadth. His belief in the pre- 
sumption of innocence until guilt proven, is finely illus- 
trated by his inquiry into the Brownsville affair. His 
cool, logical, and patriotic defense of the Constitution in 
the matter of the Hepburn rate-law made him many ad- 
mirers: and his devotion to the American wage-producer 
as against wage-producers abroad is a matter of common 
knowledge. Altogether, Mr. Foraker would make an ideal 
candidate for indorsement by Amercian Business and Amer- 
ican Wage-Production. 

Ex-Secretary Shaw : Mr. Shaw, now of New York City, while 
Secretary of the Treasury, proved himself in sympathy 
with the principle of American Business for American 
Business Men. He would be ''safe and sane" and make a 
fine, steady, and reliable President. ^ ^_ 

Speaker Cannon: Has always stood "like a stone wall" In 
defense of the domestic market as the natural property of 
the domestic wage-producer. 

Governor Hughes: Through the haze of an all too brief 
public career, there loom in Governor Hughes the outlines 
of a figure of colossal proportions in statecraft. He re- 
minds one of Abraham Lincoln in his calmness and balance 
and his certainty of doing the wise thing at the wise time. 
The only point of doubt is as to his education on the mat- 
ter of international trade and as to whether he is too much 
in sympathy with the New York Importing Rmg to realize 
the 'weight of the American wage-producer's claim to the 
whole of his own domestic market. The fact that a man 
is a Republican does not chalk him sound on this point: 
for Mr. Roosevelt claims to be a Republican. One great 
thing in Mr. Hughes's favor is that he is not a politician 
and does not pull political wires. The Presidency will have 
to hunt for him : for he will never hunt the Presidency. 



462 

But sober business men could not afford to back even men as 
good as these, unless the Republican platform unequivocally 
declared against any downward revision of a single item on 
the tariff schedule; and as unequivocally promisea, a decided 
increase in the tariff on the rising tide of European imports 
which threatens soon to extinguish our factory fires. 

Therefore, with the failure of Republican platform assur- 
ances of the sort above outlined, or with the renomination of 
Mr. Roosevelt, the nomination of Mr. Taft, committed as he is 
to downward tariff revision, or of anybody at present in the 
Roosevelt Cabinet or in any way favored by the present Wash- 
ington regime, with its open hostility to Amercian Property- 
Production, our business men and wage-producers should vote 
for upward revision Congressmen, and for the democratic pres- 
identical candidate, whose election would then close up the Re- 
publican ranks against downward revision, since neither the 
House nor the Senate, if Republican, would consent to grind 
Democratic free-trade axes. 



The End. 



DP. 



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